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U/ 




October 1988 


A 


»■* mi s crw. 

,/et 

JTeiswafvef 


2750 Balterup 
Tif. 4473 4611 


£1.25 


SALAMANDER 


Exclusive interview 
with the author 


Build a 
model 
universe 


STATSBIBUQTEKI: T 
DEFQTEMBLIQTEKET 
Tetegrafvej 2 
2750 Baliorup 
[if, 4473 4611 


Info-Script - the all-in- 
one business package' 


Machine code 
RSX programming 








The official magazine for all users of the Amstrad CPC series 


Norway NOK 20.00 Denmark Kr. 13.50 New Zealand NZ$4 95 Rec. 





































late Wa rrior 


/ RAMPAGE 

/ £/ Thrsa-i -ticrr ce 

“ nice suys dan tgst u 
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Llrjih-!T>U| groy-ihrau^ri 

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Can ne Yanosh ihc rarsea of Parifncss-and free slut FrihE.'t? 

■QWLf roil CAN £*V. 

rait-e Stflwn. ! 9 fl? 


SUPER I PRINT 

McenKd Cram Ar.sr! Gants* 1 cnginai m-jflsy-vpliiftnfl 

rcir pu nne or two payers enmpsts head to ■<« e«r eight 'iiuullng ir«».t m-a 
lour resets of game d flleulty. A-o d CM- Ivsiiardt ard suiita i|ui::cn vnniYtm in 
kAIMiilc cuiln— rarlPMlnre* - the My «■ Sijprr Epnnc. VSScn idtuiltJ ijiirrulia-. 

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AMSTRAD 
COMMODORE 
- SPECTRUM 




ONLY 


Ocean Soflwaie Limited-6Cental StreeL Manchester- M2 5NS TeleDlione 061 83? 6633- Telex 6BB977 OCEANS 3 














































































FEATURES 



REGULARS 


5 


News 

Amstrad signs deal with 
IBM, Pepsi challenges 
Europe, new rom board for 
Arnold, plus a roundup of 
the latest releases. 



Letters 

Lance Davies answers your 
questions, ranging from 
Pip to Philippine TV sets. 




Adventures 

Bill Brock reviews CRL s 
Wolfman, Alternative's 
Cricket Crazy and 
Topologika's Philosopher s 
Quest. 


21 


Applications 

Advice 


Printer fix for Starwatcher, 
character fix for GAC r plus 
more on CP/M. 


39 


Hairy Hackers 

Pokes for Nomad, Doors of 
Doom, Tubaruba, Hopping 
Mad and Ikari Warriors, 
plus a neat memory editor. 


PROGRAMMING 



The Model 
Universe 

Discover how the planets 
move around the Sun with 
our simulation of an 
astronomical orrery. 


Amstrad User October 1988 



Stardodger II 

Stewart Russell describes 
the fast BCPL version of 
his tempting type-in game. 



Auntie John’s 
Machine Code 

How to set up Basic bar 
commands using machine 
code and the built-in CPC 
firmware* 



Basic Tutor 

Jeff Walker shows you 
how to find data related 
errors using a little bit of 
detective work. 


REVIEWS 


45 

45 


Shackled 

US Gold multi-load 
jai l break. 

Ninja Scooter 
Simulator 

RAD ramps and ridges 
from Silverbird. 



Bionic 

Commando 

Gol guns and grapples 
game. 



European 

5-a-side 


Silverbird sawn-off table 
football 



Night Raider 

Sink the Bismarck with 
Gremlin Graphics. 



Football 
Manager 2 

Addictive sequel to the old 
bestseller. 



Coding Kidz 

There is no rest for the 
wicked* 



Dynamic Duo 

Alex Aird compares two 
dedicated databases that 
run under different CPC 
operating systems. 



Slippery 

Character 

Simon Rockman interviews 
Andrew G la Ester, author of 
Salamander. 




Silent Partners 

Pat Winstanley takes a look 
at Info-Script, the new 


database-cum-wo rd 


proeessor-cum spelling 
checker from Brunning 
Softwa re* 


Editorial and Advertising offices; 
1&9 King's Road, Brentwood. 
Esse* CM14 4EF 

Tel: 0277-234459 {Editorial}; 

0277 234434 (Advertising} 
Telecom Gold: 72: MA GO2 1 


ABC l! 

53.599 

Jtan-JurM 1BST 


Published by Avralite Ltd. Adlingtun 
Park, Adlington, Macclesfield SKIS) 4NP 


News trade distribution: Uismo.nd-E j iroprets Sales 
& Distribution Ltd r Unit Bijrg^s fioad, fvybouse 
lane, Hastings, East Susses TfiiJS 4NR 
Tel: 6424 43042?, 


Editor: Simon Rockman 
Assistant Editor; Jeff Walker 
Editorial Assistant; Elaine Rawlins 
Advertisement Manager; Jane Wadham 
Advertising Sales; Clare Baxter 

Jonathan Lockwood 
Production Assistant: Tanya ALRais 


Amstrad j‘s a registered trade mark, end with the 
title Amstrad Computer User . is used with the 
permission of Amstrad pic. fvo pert of this 
puhSication may be produced without permission. 
While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy 
of ali features and Sittings cannot accept any 
liability for any mistakes or misprints. The views 
and opinions expressed are rw* necessarily those of 
Arrrjrrettf or Amsott but represent the views of our 
many read tfs, users, (to(f contributors. Material for 
pubtlcttkrn ts on Sy accepter/ on an al!-rights £asr.s. 
We regret that Amstnd Computer User cannoi 
enter into person nl correspondence. 

Ay rail te Ltd 1388 


Page 3 
























































Will the Olympics 
come to Manchester? 


The gold medalist of 
computer shows is on its way 
back to Manchester's imposing 
G-MEX centre. 

Amstrad and more than 
70 other exhibitors will be 
displaying the latest products 
for you to try before yon buy. 

Need some technical 
help? Leading experts will be 
on hand throughout the three 
days to answer all your queries 

With hundreds of special 
show offers available, every 
visitor could end up a 
financial winner. 

You can even save 
yourself a £1 before you get 
there by using the advanced 
ticket order form. 

How to get there 

Dr Ling? G-MEX is in 
the city centre - only one 
mile from the M602 — with 
ample parking available. It is 
also witlun easy reach of 
Victoria and Piccadilly railway 
stations, and Chorlton Street 
bus station. 


WE WILL! 


The Northern 



October 21-23, 

FRJ-SAT I0am-6pm — SUN i0atn-4pm 


Advance ticket order 


(AMSTRAD ST] 

13 e prepared for a warm 
welcome in "Amstrad Street ’ 
-a brand new show feature 
area, specially constructed tor 
the event 

Take a stroll down the 
street and see how Amstrad 
machines are playing a major 
role behind the scenes in the 
current northern boom, 

* Drop in on the ' *Amstrad 
Arms” our answer to the 
"Rover's Return”. 

* Visit “Amstrad School and 
observe how r students in the 
north west are benefitting 
from the new technology. 

* Check out what's going on 
in a local company where 
Amstrad machines are 
providing them with the 
competitive edge. 

* Inspect the Amstrad 
innovation w-orkshop, 

And much, much more. 

It will be an 

unforgettable experience* 


G-MEX CENTRE, MANCHESTER.. October 21-21, t$*8. 

Ikjst tu: Ami. trad .SJiuw TieketS, Europe Hoose, AdHngton Rarlr, 


Advance ticket Unkn muni be received bv Wed., Oct 12, ] WH. 


AdEngton, MawifififW SJfJfl 

□ Chrtjuc r ijL I■:y-.u■! :ri;i,lc payable !u 

Daubast PublicjtriofB Ltd, 

□ Pk-«.vc lictaL my tttJjL iiiid aCCOUJir 

Q Arikhs Visa 

I I I_I IL_I_I L 


□ Milk wkKfc. at £4 (save £. 1 ) £_.. 

□ U/16i ockctE at 0 - 5 $ (save £l ) £. 

TOTAL £,.. 

ADMISSION AT DOOR 
AD ULTS £5 U/16t £3.50 


Name. 


Addtfit. 


J I II L 


L 


........Sidled . 

PHONE ORDERS: Ring Stow Hotline: M25 17WO I’Jeaac quote 

PRESTEL ORDERS: KEY “f» THEN 614H01M number and 

MICROLINK ORDERS: MAILBOX 72; MAGOOt fuB add™* 



DATABASE EXHIBITIONS 


R15Q 


^Amstrad in a rtgiBUfied lradflmijris o'* 




















































\ 



Pepsi 

challenges 

Europe 

PEPSI has joined up with US 
Gold to produce a series of 
Pepsi Challenge computer 
games. Together they will be 
throwing down the gauntlet 
to millions of computer 
games fans throughout 
Europe and the UK. 

Inside each of the games in 
this new range will be a 
token stating a score set by 
the gametesters, If you can 
beat it you will qualify to 
take part in the Pepsi 
Challenge - a free prize draw 
in which you stand to win 
any one of a number of 
superb gifts. 

The Pepsi Challenge 
games will be released 
before Christmas. 

Good 

morning, 

fl | 


Amstrad signs deal with IBM 


AMSTRAD and IBM have 
signed a deal for the 
exchange of patents. It 
grants Amstrad a worldwide 
non-exclusive licence under 
all of IBM's patents for the 
manufacture and sale of per* 
sonal computer products, 
including those pertinent to 
IBM personal computers and 
the IBM PS/2. 

The agreement also gives 
IBM worldwide non¬ 
exclusive rights to all 
Amstrad products. 

The obvious conclusion is 
that Amstrad can use the 
microchannel architecture 
which makes the IBM PS/2 so 
special. But it also gives 
Amstrad the chance to move 
into the Electronic Point of 
Sale market I EPOS). Amstrad 
could, if ft wanted to, start 
making things like cash 
registers. 

What IBM gets in return is 
less clear. Amstrad would 
have to inform IBM which 
patents it intended to take up 
- which gives IBM prior 


IBM could build Amstrad CPCs, li is unlikely that they wilt warrt In, Our 
our artist's impression shows what such s device could look like. 


notice of Amstrad's plans. 

It is nice to see that 
Amstrad, despite being 
Europe's number one micro 
manufacturer and still little 
known in the US, is taken 
seriously by IBM, a company 
which spends more on 
research and development 
each month than Amstrad 


makes in a year. 

Don't expect to see IBM 
CPCs or programmer videos 
too soon. IBM may have 
picked up the rights to 3 
dozen or so patents r but 
Amstrad has access to 
thousands of IBM patents. 

Quite a victory for Alan 
Sugar and his legal team. 


Probe 

stunner 

THE extraordinary screen 
shots on the right show the 
first level from Savage, the 
game mentioned in the 
Probe article (ACt/ August) 
when it was called The 
Roman Games, 

The name may keep a- 
changing, but the software 
stays stunning. The game 
wilt be sold by Firebird, and 
from what we've seen, we 
can't wait. 

Savage is being written 
by Dave Perry, who was 
responsible for Trantor and 
Beyond The Ice Palace. It will 
have three distinct levels. 
The first one, shown here, 
features a Trantor-like man 
running across a smooth 
scrolling screen. Captions 

Amstrad User October 1388 




pop up and read "Be 
careful", "Energy" and 
1 "Nearly there". 

Your man can pick up a 
wide variety of weapons - a 
spinning mace, an axe, 
lasers and a protective ball. 

A snake - not unlike the 
one at the end of the first 
level in Ice Palace - loops 
around to attack. Shoot it 
from in front to kill it or from 
behind to generate extra 
weapons. 

One scene has the hero 
jumping over spectacular 
flames, landing on stepping 
stones that sink on to the fire 
if you hang about. 

Level two looks even more 


stunning, in a 3D Buck 
Rogers or Space Harrier kind 
of way. 

The landscape scrolls as 
you look out of your cockpit. 
Huge totem poles fly 
towards you, small ones in 
the background grow to 
become detailed towers as 
they near. 

When we told Fergus from 
Probe how impressed we 
were, he said "Ah, but you 
saw the old version. It is 
much better now". 

Level three is still under 
development It will feature a 
bird looking down on a land¬ 
scape that scrolls in eight 
directions. 





A MIDLANDS firm of 
solicitors, Goodger Auden, 
has published a booklet 
entitled Computer Law, It 
outlines the various legal 
problems that can affect pro¬ 
grammers, software houses, 
hardware manufacturers, 
distributors, agents and end- 
users. 


Robert Bond, a partner in 
Goodger Auden, told ACU: 
"We have produced this 
booklet to make the layman 
aware of the implications of 
the relevant laws and regu¬ 
lations, In many cases the 
problems that arise out of 
computer law require swift 
reaction", 

Copies of the 10-page 
booklet can be had free of 
charge from Goodger 
Auden, 2/3 Lichfield Street, 
Burton-on-Trent, DEI 4 3RB 
ITet 0283 44323). 


P&ge 5 






























THE r FESTIVAL MICRO 



Situated at ten minutes walk from the Champs Elysees in the center of PARIS 

This is an event not to be missed. 


Organised by NEO MEDIA publishers 
5-7 rue de lAmiral Courbet 94160 SAINT-MANDE - FRANCE 

For further information and stand booking,, on 033 1 43 98 22 22 


Fax ; 43 28 7212 


MADISON 



























































New rom 
board for 
Arnold 

MICRQGEMC System? has 
built a new ram board for the 
CPC. The Advanced Eprom 
Expansion Board comes 
without a case and features a 
hardware reset switch, a 
bank of eight switches to 
turn any particular rom on or 
off, plus a ruiVdi sable switch 
which can be used at any 
time to make the board 
invisible to the computer, 
Microgenic Systems has 
had many years experience 
designing industrial elec¬ 
tronic systems and com- 



New 

release 

roundup 

§ Game busters, the new 

budget label from Cascade, 
is to release Traz on the CPC. 
Priced at £2,99, it features 
64 levels of laser bats, 
plasma bombs and mystery 
pills. 

And if you get bored with 


+ I 


puters. This work included 
using such devices as incir¬ 
cuit emulators for a variety of 
microprocessors in real-time 
systems programmed at 
assembly level. 

The Rotherham-based 
company is now trying to 


the pre-set screens you can 
design your own with the 
world's first Breakout Con¬ 
struction Kit. 

• Roadblasters is the new 
coin-op conversion from US 
Gold, Set in the distant 
future, it has you behind the 
wheel of an armoured, high 
performance car. 

Half road race and half 
battle, Road blasters erupts 
into a final conflict between 
good and evil as you twist 
and turn through ever^ 
changing scenery, 
f Elite Systems' budget 
label, Encore, is doing well; it 


88&1T 


bring these high standards of 
engineering workmanship to 
the domestic marketplace. 

The Eprom Expansion 
Board is Microgenic's first 
product to be released on to 
the domestic market. 

Mr I.Hibbert, development 


claimed 4.5 per cent of the 
market in its first month. 
Following the release of 
Frank Bruno's Boxing and 
Airwolf, Encore plans six fur¬ 
ther £1.99 releases in the run 
up to Christmas including 
Saboteur, Bombjack Ghosts 
'n'Goblms, Commando and 
1942. 



m 

LM 

Title 

Company 

Price 

MS 


m 

t 

NE 

Football Manager 2 

Addictive 

£9.99 

m 

§ Ingrid Bottom!aw is back, 

2 

5 

Ace 

Cascade 

£2.99 

00 

Eg ■ horrifying the inhabitants of 

3 1 

4 

Yogi Bear 

Alternative 

£1.99 

85 

Little Moaning in the satirical 

A 

NE 

Air Wolf 

Encore 

£1.99 

84 

adventure sequel to Level 9's 

5 

NE 

Beach Buggy Simulator 

Silverbird 

£1.99 

78 

successful Gnome Ranger, 

6 

1 

Steve Davis Snooker 

Blue Ribbon 

£1.99 

77 

Jasper Qulckbuck, lord of 

7 

NE 

Frank Bruno Boxing 

Encore 

£1.99 

70 

Ridley's Manor, plans to 

8 

NE 

Rally Driver 

Alternative 

£1.99 

02 

steamroll this quiet corner of 

9 

3 

Fruit Machine Simulator 

Code Masters 

£1.99 

5B 

the gnome belt for a Yuppie 

10 

2 

Super Stuntman 

Code Masters 

£1.99 

55 

Homes development, Only" 

11 

NE 

European S-a-side 

Silverbird 

! £1.99 

54 

H accident-prone Ingrid can 

12 

14 

Aliens 

Mastertranic 

£1.99 

54 

stop him. 

13 

NE 

Rocky Horror Show 

Alternative 

£1.99 

53 ; 

Ingrid's Back, a three part 

14 

10 

Ghostbusters 

Mastertronic 

£1.99 

50 

graphical adventure on disc, 

15 

NE 

Sam Fox Strip Poker 

React 

£1.99 

49 

will cost £14.95. 

16 

12 

Out Run 

Sega US Gold 

£9,99 

48 J 

|| • Accolade Inc, has 

17 

7 

We are the Champions 

Ocean 

£9,99 

46 

announced the CPC release 

18 

9 

Way of the Exploding Fist 

Mastertronic 

£1,99 

46 1 

of The Train: Escape to Nor¬ 

19 

8 

Ninja Scooter Simulator 

Silverbird 

£1.99 

45 

mandy. The game is set in 

20 

15 

Trap Door 

Alternative 

£1.99 

43 

France in 1944 and simulates 


engineer for Mi erogenic Sys¬ 
tems, told ACU\ "We are also 
well advanced with the 
design and development of 
an eprom programmer, It 
has the same flow through 
connector concept as our 
Eprom Expansion Board and 
can be rigidly attached to it. 

JJ The eprom programmer 
will exploit certain advanced 
features that, to the best of 
our knowledge, are not 
implemented on any other 
similar product 1 '. 

The Eprom Expansion 
Board costs £29.95 and 
comes with two seif ad¬ 
hesive feet that 464 owners 
can attach to the underside 
of the disc drive interface to 
give additional stability. Look 
out for a review in ACU soon. 

Further details from 
Mi erogenic Systems on 0709 
829441. 


You take the role of French 
resistance leader Pierre le 
Feu, whose mission is to 
seize an armoured train and 
drive it through enemy lines 
to safety at Riviere in Nor¬ 
mandy. 

Out now priced £8.95 tape, 
£14.95 disc, 

# Hewson's latest is Nether¬ 
world, an underworld shoot 
'em up written by Jukka 
Tapanimeki from Finland, 

Diamonds are the key 
which wifi open the door to 
your escape, To get these 
precious items you must kill 
demonic dragons, maraud¬ 
ing mines, skin-searing acid 
bubbles and the ghastly tor¬ 
mented souls that float in 
infinity (who writes this 
stuff?!. 

The generators - bringers 
of life, givers of death - 
exude aliens of every 
imaginable description. In 
the shops round about now 
at £9.99 tape, £14.99 disc, 

# Virgin Games is to 
release Action Force, a 
smoothly scrolling graphical 
adventure in which you take 
the part of Wild Bill, the con¬ 
troller of a Dragonfly heli¬ 
copter 

Action Force was originally 
coded last year by the 
famous Gang of Five; the 
CPC conversion has been 
programmed by Sean Cross 
with graphics by Ian Mathias 
and Alex Martin. 

Should be in the shops by 
the time you read this at 
£8.95 on tape and a little bit 
more on disc, 


Amstrad User October 1988 


Page 7 










































not FOR 


r FORI 
ANY CPC 
ONLY 
l£29-95 A 


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If you wish to be able to STOP any program at any time and COPY it to disk or tape, fully automatically, 
at a touch of a button, then MULTIFACE 2+ is the ONLY answer. There are no other comparable 
hardware devices, and the software copiers simply cannot compete. 

Firstly you cannot compare the SUCCESS ratio of any tape copier with the MULTtFACE- you get 
what you pay for (and we throw in a tot mote with the MULTIFACE . . .). 

TAPE COPIERS always need to be loaded first, whilst A WLTfFACE has ail software in ROM for 
instant use. TAPE COPIERS can only attempt to copy a program as it stands, before it loads - there 
are various protections in the way and not enough memory for both the program to be copied and 
the copier. MULTIFACE is different you can toad any program from TAPE or DISK, run it as you wish 
and activate the MULTIFACE whenever you need it. Once you SAVE a program, fie it to DISK or 
TAPE, you can CONTINUE it, SAVE ft again it you wish, etc. In fact r you can play games as never 
before: there is no need to start from the beginning each time you ptay a game fas you would with a 
tape copier - if it couid copy in the tirst place . , J, Since you can SA VE a program at AN Y TtME and 
continue it, you can actually SA VE as you progress through a game , ft, eventually, you loose alt 
your lives, you can just load the latest saved version and continue from there! That is r If you do not 
manage to get INFINITE LIVES to start with: MUL TtEACE has a built-in TOOLKIT which allows you to 
STUDY and ALTER anything in any program ; you cart thus POKE in infinite fives r ammo, etc. 
MULTIFACE is extremely simple to use, friendly, idiot-proof, menu-driven with on-screen instructions. 
>A fully automatic - PURE MAGIC. It can be used on any CPC, comes with a cable and an extension bus 
for £47.95 ONLY! By the time you buy 10 programs on tape instead of disk - MULTIFACE will put them 
on disk lor you - you will have saved some £50 which is more than the cost of a MULTI FACE. 

The money you save on further tapes is all yours! 

MULTIFACE - WORTH EVERY FENNY, SAVES YOU POUNDS! 

NOW AVAILABLE: MULTIFACE 2 PLUS - THE INVISIBLE ONE. 


Tape io rhgjr si ihe: roiicJi of a bulion 
fiidiculous you unay say. but n woeSssi every 
rimi- Mu .'Mace- oin ssop any program m as 
riaoks nijirf jf.Lvr ihf pioqtam from memory 
ro either iape oi disk li * completely fool 
ptoni Smulas products l»vc h id problems 
with screen site coloui and ever sound 
Multifoce can handle all these wilhoui .» 
second thought 

Th 11 .dnne would hive satisfied many 
people bii! Romanltc Hcbcvi h m (June one 
step lunhei incorporating a memoiy H L dj 
lm No pruqsdJT. is safe with this every 
thing is bo 1 ! isL the open, nvciuiling the JBn 
Tegtsicrs. CRTC daU and any pari of 
memory 

Don't be tooled mlO thinking this wiJE 
ieaul[ in m.isK piracy however The M\iStf 
furr- nr.il itKH-lll rr-UKl bn plugged IP <0 yoill 
Amstrad m allow reloading o! a program it 
saved 

Mesiwtice II must be [he eleveieai hard. 
w.in.' device at present a necessity lor 
disk owr.ers who thought they were stuck 
Wilh Loading fioin tape every time 

A M S IK A D ACTION J AM A V\ IW7 


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MfNMrHWtft • rt LTUVU 


■l 


SAFE 


WOULD YOU LIKE TO TURN YOUR CPC 
INTO A PROFESSIONAL SET-UP? 


Would you like to be able to attach additional disk drives 
40/80 track, single-double sided, 5.25 or 3.5 or 3 inch - and 
store up to BOOK per disk? All controlled by a powerful DOS? 
Have RANDOM ACCESS to your files? Get a PRINTER 
BUFFER and SILICON DISK and a ROM manager and over 
50 new bar commands! All this on a single ROM: 


Now also available: RODOS EXTRA on disk for only £9.95. 
Any RODOS owner wilt find RODOS EXTRA indispensable 
it offers nearly 20GK of valuable information how to gel the 
most out of RODOS, with examples of RODOS applications 
ranging from simple to complex: such as a DISK DOCTOR or 
IBM MSDOS DISK READER. The indispensable EXTRA! 


RODOS requires a ROM BOARD. RODOS EXTRA needs RODOS. 


no program & - M , 
INSIDER &£TS IN' 

JUST INSTALL INSIDER INTO 
MULTtFACE. RUN Aftf PROGRAM 
STOP IT AT My MOAtENT ANO 
INSIDER REVEALS EVERyTHWG: 
IT WILL FULLY DISASSEMBLE, 
FWD TEXT OR CODE, VIEW/ALTER 

EtS&Sr-Tff&F 

““""•atKjE #95 


FT-ft-t > > 11 

INSIDER needs MULTIFACE 2 




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Order; MULTIFACE 2 £47.95 □ 

INSIDER £14.95 □ 


RODOS • 
RODOS EXTRA 


£29.95 □ Plus pap UK £1 , EUROPE £2 
£9,95 O Overseas £3 


I enclose a cheque PO for £..or debit my 

Name & address .... 


No 


Card exp 


rjjii'iir P.IJJ ■ i’c '.tj 54 Dejnscroll Ave. London fJW9 BEN 


ACU 






















































/ 


i 

IETTERS 


l _ 

7 



Pacific transformation 


WE are planning to go to the Philippines for a 
holiday and I want to take my keyboard with me. 
My questions are; 

el Is it possible for me to buy a transformer? 
Philippine electricity is 22Qv AC. 

b) Would a MP’i modulator be suitable to use 
on a TV set in the Philippines? 

Miss ft E Clark , 
Aldebutgh, Su ffolk. 

LD; Philippine TV is NTSC Neither the MM 
modulator nor the MP-2 modulator will work 
with this system. Sorry. Hope i haven't spoiled 
your holiday. 119 be your keyboard, Beep beep. 


1387 where are you? 


I READ in the excellent feature Rim Writer (July 
19801 that in the June 1987 issue there is an 
article showing you how to scroll the screen, 
Great, I thought, 111 have to order that back issue. 
I turn to the special offers at the back only to find 
that it is impossible to buy any of the 1987 back 
Issues. Why is this? 

Daniel Thomas r 
Chimside, Berwickshire, 

LD: it's because we've totally sold out of the 
entire 1987 volume. Well actually, I m told there 
are one or two 1987 issues still hanging about in 
our back issue department so if you phone and 
ask |Tel 0625 8799201 you might just be lucky. 
But you'd better be quick about it, 


Socket to me 


TWO questions:: What is the difference between a 
CTM640 colour monitor and the others with a 5 
volt socket on the front? 

Secondly* does the Screenvision gadget that 
turns your monitor into a a TV make the screen 
blur? Is it up to standard, and what do you need 
to run it? Do you need a TV licence for it? 

Kevin Fallon, 
Edinburgh. 

LD: The "other" colour monitor is the CTM644, It 
comes with the 664 and 6128 end has an extra 
I2v DC socket I not 5v] to provide power to run 
the built in disc drive. 

The Screenvision TV Tuner works fine. You 
just plug ft into your monitor via the RGB socket 
and stick an aerial in the back of it An outdoor 
aerial gives a better picture than an indoor one. 
The licence you have for the colour TV in your 
front room will cover the Screenvision TV Tuner 
as well. 


Shall i r shan't I? 


I WOULD be ever so grateful if you could tell me 
the best sort of adventure game to start with. 
Before we had a CPC our family had tried D&D 



but got rather frustrated with character gener¬ 
ation, multi-zillion sided dice and heated argu¬ 
ments. 

Armed with a GACI ventured forth into adven¬ 
ture writing. The problem is, I've got no yardstick 
to see if my puzzles are in keeping with commer¬ 
cially produced games, On my very mediocre 
income I'm afraid to experiment by buying the 
wrong type of adventure. 

Roy Watkins, 
Llanelli. 

LD: GAC adventures are still being marketed by 
companies such as Mastertronic, Alternative 
and CRL. The standard isn't particularly high, 
but then nor are the £1.99 budget prices. 

Bill Brock reviews two or three adventures 
every month, including budget ones written 
using GAC, Read the reviews and decide for 
yourself which are worth buying. As a rough 
guide, the more expensive the adventure, the 
larger and more complicated it will be. 


Tic Tac crash 


I HAVE written before about being unable to 
make your Basic and machine code programs 
work.. I spent six hours typing in Treasure Hunt 
and the Noughts and Crosses game. 9s it me, or is 
it me? 

ft Bucks, 
Warminster. 

LD: It's you. Both listings were published 
correctly except for a small error in the Treasure 


A ms trad User October J 988 


Semi yuur fetters to.' 

Lance Davis 
Letters Editor 
Amstrad Computer User 
189 Kings Road. Brentwood 
Essex CM14 4EF 


Hunt machine code poker routine that won't 
cause the program to crash if the rest of the 
program is typed in correctly. Change the last 
expression in line 2210 to read ln=231Q. 





I HAVE a DDI-1, IVe been trying to make a copy of 
my Masterfile fl disc as recommended. Abso¬ 
lutely no joy, Even tried the PIP A=:* f from the 
May newsletter, I get a message back Drive A; 
Disc ts write protected. On cancelling I get Bdos 
Err on A: Bad Sector,'m still working on if, but if 
you have any ideas l would appreciate it if you 
could pass them on, 

George Chatfield, 
Taunton , 


LD: The command you tried - PIP A: =** - will 
copy all files on the disc in drive A to the same 
disc - a bit of a pointless operation. Luckily the 
write protect tab ofi your Masterfile disc was 
down, hence the first error message. 

The second error message appeared because 
your Masterfile disc is data formatted, CP/M 2.2 
doesn't like data formatted discs very much. 

You should have a program on your CP/M 2.2 
master disc called DISCKJT2 or DISCCOPY, Boot 
up CP/M and type DISCKIT2 or DISCCOPY when 
the A> prompt appears. Follow the on-screen 
instructions to copy a disc. 


6128 turn off 


DOES anyone out there know how to turn off my 
6128'$ disc drive, because I cannot load 
Paperboy, Nemesis and a few others? 

Vincent Lahiff, 
Mungret Eire. 

LD: OK. One program to disable the built-in disc 
drive on the 684 and 6128, compliments of Cliff 
Lawson (he works for Amstrad,! you know). 
Make sure you save this Basic program before 
you run it because the machine code in the data 
statements is not checksummed. 


IQs 

FDR 

1 = 0 TO 

56;flEA0 

hS 


110 

b=V ft L C 'S'+ bs 

):POKE 83000 + a 

,b 

120 

klEKT 

CALL l 

8003 



130 

MTA 

ed,c8, 

bc,7a,b3 

,20,05 

M 

140 

HU 

00,11; 

0 6, e 0, e c : 

,53,3c 

,80 

150 

MTA 

ed,43, 

3e,S0,21 

,1c,80 

,3e 

160 

DATA 

fC,Cti, 

16,hd,2a 

,3c,60 

,ed 

170 

HU 


B0,4Mt 

,c9,32 

,:b 

180 

HU 

bS;22; 

39,60,79 

,32,3b 

,80 

m 

DATA 

1MB, 

00,.21,ff 

,ab,df 

,39 

m 

MTA 

80 





Down in the dumps 


I HAVE recently bought a printer. It was sold to 
me as an MP i35 r but the supplier informed me 
that it is made by Shinwa, model no. CP-80. 

This meant that I had to re-read all my back 


Page 9 

















































SOFTWARE THAT’S 
HARD TO BEAT 


TASWORD 6128 


The Word Processor - with Mail Merge 

The established, powerful word processor for 
the Amstrad CPC 6126. TASWORD 6120 lifts 
been specifically developed to use 64K of 
memory as text spaca This means a text file 
can be a massive RO r OOO characters in length, 
enough room for over 10,000 words! 

Featuring all standard and many extra word 
processing facilities TASWORD 6128 
incorporates sophisticated print options, 
on-screen help, notepads,, user definable keys 
allowing commonly used words, sentences or 
paragraphs to be typed with a single keypress 
and e powerful built-in data merge facility 
Extensive customisation facilities allow many 
of the facilities to he changed for persona: 
requirements and saved into the program. 

By combining power with ease of use 
TASWORD 6128 is the complete word 
processor for the CPC 6128. Oise £24.95 


TASWORD 4S4-D 


The Word Processor - with Mail Merge 

The TASWORD especially developed to utilise 
the capabilities of the CPC 464 and 664disc 
drives. Additional facilities include a larger 
text file size and automatic on-screen disc 
directories during save and load opera tic ns. 

A major feature is the data merge facility. 

Mail marge, in which a letter is printed any 
number of times, each individually addressed 
to a different person, is just one application of 
This powerful facility. TASWORD 464 D is 
supplied on, and only runs on r disc. 

Disc £24.95 


TASWORD 464 


The Word Processor 

Year 464 becomes a professional standard 
word processor with TASWORD 464. 

Supplied complete with a comprehensive 
manual and a cassette which contains both 
the program and TASWORD 464 TUTOR. 

This Teaches you word processing using 
TASWORD 464. Whether you have serious 
applications or simply want to learn about 
word precessing, TASWORD 464 and the 
r UTOFI make it easy and enjoyable, 

Cassette £19.95 


TASWORD UPGRADES 


TASWORD 464and Amsword owners: send 
your urigirial cassette or disc Inti the 
packagingI as proof of purchase and £13.90. 
Vour original will be returned together with 
TASWORD 464 D or TASWORD 6128 on disc. 


TASCOPY 464 


The Screen Copier 
for the CPC 6126, 664 and 464 

A suite of fast machine code screen copy 
software for the CPC computers. Print high 
resolution screen copies in black and white 
and also large "shaded" copies with different 
dot densities for the various screen colours, 
TASCOPY can also print "poster size" copies 
— screen copies printed onto two or four 
sheets can be cut and joined tn make the 
poster. Disc £12.90 Cassette £9.90 


TAS-SIGN 


The Sign Maker 
for the CPC 6128 and PCW 

Produce and print your own signs, posters, 
banners and large notices to get your 
message across with maximum impact, 

A complete sign making package including 
four distinctive lettering styles, character 
heights from one inch to the full width of the 
paper, italics, underlining, borders, eight 
shading patterns, variable letter spacing, 
automatic kerning and line centering. 

Signs may be printed across the paper or 
airing the length of the paper to produce 
rge eye-catching banners and notices. 

Disc £29.95 



TAS-SIGN — additional fonts 

wo new, impressive fonts for TAS-SIGN, the 
sign maker: ROMAN a clear, classical foni 
and HOBART, a bold and imposing typeface. 

Disc £12.50 


if=WiiV*Y 


PERFECTION IN PRI)FE&SIONAL SOFTYVAHE 


TAS-SPELL 


The Spelling Checker 

Spelling mistakes and typing errors spoil any 
document whether it r s a private letter or your 
latest novel, With TAS-SPELL you are free to 
be creative in the confident knowledge that 
your spelling won't let you down. 

TAS-SPELL checks the spelling of text typed 
with TASWORD 464 D and TASWORD 6120 
by comparing the words in your text with 
those in a dictionary of over 20,600 words, 
Suspect words are high I g r ted - yo u may 
correct, ignore (it might be a name I or even 
add words to the dictionary. Please note that 
TAS-SPELL only works with TASWORD 4B4-D 
and TASWORD 6128. Disc £16.50 


TASPRIMT 464 


The Style Writer 
for the CPC 6128, 664 and 464 

A must for dot matrix printer owners! 

Print Tasword output and program stings in 
a choice of five impressive print styles. 

Varying from the futuristic DATA RUN to the 
hand writing style of PALACE SCRIPT, 
TASPRINT gives your output originality and 
style! Disc £12.90 Cassette £9.90 


TASDIARY 


The Electronic diary 
TAS DIARY for the Amstrad CPC 6120, 
664 and 464 with disc drive 

Keep an electronic day to day diary on disc! 
TAS-DIARY features a clock, calendar and a 
separate screen display for every day of the 
year. Each year stared on disc includes a 
memo pad and several note pages. 

TAS-DIARY is an invaluable aid to keeping 
records, reminders, and any other data which 
is related to that most valuable commodity of 
ours-time! Disc £12.90 


SpnrgheldUnise HfiteTerracE;LeedsiiS?SIN ThI.(OG32M3B301 


Igs-Sitl". Tg&pmr snd Tsscopf dr^e ready ad rtor-rngrrm 

nrmrnrs including Ihnsemads by 

AJn'ale 

Canon 

Mannesneenn Taiy Shrwa 

Amstrad 

Cnuen 

UEC Smith Corona 

Adtech 

Daic-ch 

Nc-A'hurv Sord 

Rrorhcr ■ 

Epson 

Panasonic [liar 

C li-nh 

foria-Texan 

Seikt^ha 


If you do ooi '/vant to cut the magerine, simply write dui vour order and oosi id' 'A^MAriSOFTWAflE, CEFT A(X,, SPRINGFIELD HOUSE, HYDE ItFiRACF, LFFDS- LS? 9Lk 


l enclose a chequ&PO made payatlH 1:1 TASMAN Sflllware Lm DR charge ny ACCESS'VISh oumter _ 

NAME_ _ ITEM 

ADDRESS_____ 


Telephone Acces&'Visa erdere: Leeds I0532M343D1 


0 




0 ilside E trope ede E7 00 per me in airmail. 


Expires 

PRICE 

[ _ 

£ _ 
£ _ 

[ 


TOTAL £ 


Please send me i FRE E Chinan whure cw'b'ng jiqw inwlticiis lu< iBMiflfpsirjd PI] Q Amsind PCW Q Amalnd CPC Q ZX Spectrum*J [_] ZX Spacirutn JbJOlJyti+2 [~] CnipmwJ&'e H Q Tatung Entt* Q tfu 


.V'Vii .■VTT'.rv L-Ip y™r tw WmU-Vr.t- lr.kv*7,i :iu i*™-. -tin piiAiA j.t ..irwi " UUM (MW i .if&K i> I Si IJ XMHHHM euSH: Iffl ■W* V ' I-. ' • ■ ‘ ' «UV, 

■lytyi Sr VSJ PMMy/.W V"* fcdiun. H ?',]Uv.w ''-CtiVt. ^litt AJU ' WuSK* JL.r'ltu'.OotiSw fppin wh i vm 4unp y_ y\r **w .Sflfd <*»■ MiM V'.J’ :^f£» ' t- *■ V tm 

.i-jx-j 1 «S Sib «'W ih| ■ >*».&. *C W 'H JH Sir Mum* 















































































issues of ACU to pick out any of the printer and 
word processor articles that I had passed over at 
first reading, (Not having a printer meant they 
were of no interest to me at the time. Why do I 
have to find out that the Shinwa CP-80 is "infam¬ 
ous'" almost immediately after I bought one?) 

While going through the back issues I spied a 
small snippet in a pari of an advert for Utilities 
Unlimited. This is one of the ACU discs con¬ 
taining among other things, Epson Dump. Will 
this program work with my printer? And, if so, 
which issue is it listed in? Can I include it in my 
own programs? 

L W Klimaszewski, 
Wrexham, 

ID: The screen dump utility on Utilities 
Unlimited wilt not work with your printer. But 
we published another screen dump back in 
January 1986 for which we have a patch (thank 
you, Joe Jackson} that will enable it to work 
with a Shinwa CP-86. 

If you acquire a copy of said January 1986 
issue and adjust the listing on page 22 as 
follows, I'm sure you'll be more than happy with 
the results. 

DATA fac9212d82cd6b81,11B0 
5690 OAT A B-t0fl>H000034e20,205 


Late lunch 


I FOUND Professional Lawnmower Simulator 
generally very playable once I had ironed out all 
my typing errors - not easy when fa) errors are 
displayed white on white and ib) you cannot 
re-run the program as several things are defined 
early on, meaning that you have to save, reset, 
load and try again. Very tedious if you are not 
sure that the change will work or not. 

I have altered line 1660, as I felt it was wrong 
that, having completed my first ever game in the 
remarkable time of 47 hrs 37 mins, I was told - to 
my amazement - that lunch was ready. My best 
time so far is 1 hr 7 mins. 

John Allard, 
Wellesbourne. 

LD: Hopefully ACU Proofreader is now helping 
you to spot your typing errors before you come 
to run listings for the first time. 


Wops solution 


IN your July issue you reviewed Wops and said 
that "there may be problems, however, using the 
Disc Copier on a 6128 with two disc drives". I 
have such a set-up and would like to advise your 
readers that there is no problem, provided that 
the extra memory is not used. 

In its current advert Camel Micros states that 
every tenth mail order gets Wops absolutely free, 

I can vouch for this as I was one of the lucky ones. 

Chris Whiting, 
Croydon, 

ID: This J "won't copy"" feature is one that 
Camel can't reproduce on its own machines. If 
anyone else is experiencing difficulties copying 
discs with Wops on a dual drive 6123 set-up. 


1 

LETTERS 



M 



please contact Camel as they are eager to sort 
this problem out (Tel 0392 211392). 

The latest version of Wops has the ability to 
hold itself in the extra ram - a sort of pseudo 
rum - meaning it can now re boot itself without 
having to replace the master disc in Drive A. 
John Keneatly of Camel Micros says that plans 
are afoot to put the Wops system, plus a whole 
lot more, on to ram in the near future, 


Cover story 


FROM my first sight of the August cover I have 
been wondering where I had seen the drawing of 
that fast moving nasty before. I seem to recall 
that there was a competition some time ago on 
the TV - either on Blue Peter or some other such 
program - for child viewers to send in their pic¬ 
tures for an eventual winner. Am I correct? 

M Fryattj 
York 

LD: Nope. That magnificent piece of artwork 
was drawn by Tim White, the famous fantasy 
artist, in 1978. It was originally the cover of a 
novel by James H.Schmit called The Lion Game. 


Move Auntie John 


DEAR Auntie John, my girlfriend keeps telling me 
l‘m too ... sorry, wrong Auntie. Start again. 

A great idea to find out if anyone is reading 
what you write is to make a mistake end invite 
requests for the correction. I hope this is a 
one-off, as yours is quite the best introduction to 
machine code I've seen since I started looking in 
1985. All the books and articles I've studied - 
zilch; but I really feel I'm understanding now. 
Love, 

Peter Daniels, 
Worthing, 


I hate Auntie John 


ONE register short of a CPU is ravin" right, pal! I 
refer of course to Auntie John's new machine 
code series which is-howcan 1 put this politely- 
dreadful. 

Fora start, I would like to know who it is aimed 
at. The explanation of registers and opcodes is 
too sketchy and incomplete for the beginner, and 
wasted on anybody who knows anything about 
the subject. 

He moves on to explain what you can do with 
registers - a fairly logical next step - but, again, 
the four things he mentions are far too imprecise. 

He recommends that the serious machine - 
coder buy himself a decent assembler. Might I 
enquire what constitutes a “decent assembler”? I 
presume he means the one he is using. 

Looking at the listings themselves, there are a 
great many instructions that aren't properly 
explained. And then there is the wonderful 
Exploding Cooker Trick. Very amusing. Auntie 
John, especially for people like me who like to 
sneer at those less knowledgeable than them¬ 
selves. It would be more helpful if these little 
timeouts were replaced with something more 
relevant to the subject in hand. 

Overall this was a pretty appalling start to a 
series which purports to teach machine code to 
beginners. 

Steven Pemberton, 
Blackpool. 



1 HAVE designed and built an expansion to my 
computer, It consists of two 8k ram chips which 
are mapped into the system as rom 3. To write to 
the ram 1 push a switch so that when rom 3 is 

► 



Amstrad User October 1938 


Page 11 



















































unbeatable prices, unbeatable service 


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A tri , 
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* Master Calc 128 *..£23.95 

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CPM DISC 1 - MACHINE CODE TOOLS Pncr £5 50 


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CPM DISC 5 - THE BUSINESS Price £5. 


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diplionary, Gorier, Word oounler, CorniTE utility, plus NswSweep and more. 


CPM DISC & and 7 - P ASCAL PLUS <Two Discs) Price 1=9.00 


Pascal, SCi, Coho I EBaaic. Powerful text editor, plus NewSweeo 


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available to WACCl subscribers. 
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Goods by return with Postal Orders 


THE SPECIAL OFFERS 


Rombo rom box.*.£27.00 

5 x Amsoft CF2 Discs —.......£12.95 

10 x Amsoft CF2 Discs...*...£23.95 

DMP2000 Printer Ribbons (each).....£2>95 



Disc 

Rom 

Protext (CP/M+).. 

.£47.00 

— 

Pretext.... 

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Pocket Protext (CP/M+). 

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— 

Prospell... 

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£23.25 

Maxam 2 (CP/M+).. 

.£39.00 

“ 

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£23.25 

BCPL. 

.£19.50 

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BCPL (CP/M+). 

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— 

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.£15.00 

— 

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Micro Music Creator.. 

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ViDI-CPC Digitiser......,„„£68.00 



WACCl CPC, 59 THE GREEN, TWICKENHAM, MIDDX TW2 5BU 

Est. 1986 - Phone 01-898 1090 


Page 72 


Amsfr&d Us&r October 1986 



















































































































LITTERS 



active it maps into the screen memory. 

The write routine and the board work OK, but 
when I switch the computer on - or reset it - the 
title of the rom is displayed twice, even though it 
is only programmed to display once. Can you 
help me? 

J W Whitfield , 
Gainsborough, Lines. 

LD: I think it is a board problem, but can't say for 
sure without seeing a circuit diagram, The CPC 
has a very loose decoding arrangement, k could 
be finding your rom twice. Or it could be 
something to do with the use - or lack of use- of 
data line D1 


g pokes 


I am a great fan of ACU. I especially like the Hairy 
Hacker's section. Justin - whoever he is - seems 
to be very good at writing pokes. I was won¬ 
dering how people set about writing a poke. I 
would love to be able to write my own. Could you 
tell me what to do? 

D Trenchard, 
Middlesborough , 

LD: To write good pokes you need to know a bit 
about machine code. You need to find the part of 
the program where the initial program variables 
are stored. 

This is a simplification, but to get lots of lives 
you would have to look for the machine code 
equivalent of "lives=6" and change it to "live- 
s=255 J \ Learn machine code, and you'll learn 
how to write pokes. 


Channel tuner 


1 AM seriously contemplating buying an NIP-2 
colour TV modulator in connection with my 14m 
multi-standard Redson TV. This set is operable 
on all the UK and West European TV systems - 
French TV is receivable in this part of the UK - 
incorporating automatic switching of both the 
PAL and Secam colour systems. On this TV is a 
video switch which I use regularly with my VCR 
via the scan socket, thus by-passing the TV tuner. 

Can you please let me know if I need to buy a 
special cable to connect from the MP-2 to the 
TV's scant socket, thereby avoiding having to use 
channel 36, which is the normal video channel? 

David Moller, 
Eastbourne. 

LD: The MP-2 is tuned to channel 36. The scarf 
socket will not understand the signals the MP-2 
is sending out. 


Line noise 


I AM the owner of a 464 to which I have added a 
rom board, printer and disc drive. I have now 
decided to buy a modem, As my knowledge of 
modems is somewhat limited, 1 would be grateful 
if you could answer the following questions: 
is the software required available on rom? If so, 


what is the best interface to buy? How can I per¬ 
suade my wife that a modem is an essential 
requirement for all home computer systems? 

Colin Graham, 
Selkirk. 

LD: I could think of a few ways to persuade your 
wife that a modem is a good thing - shopping by 
phone, hairdresser appointments by phone, 
cookery databases - but 111 get accused of being 
sexist, so 9 won't go into that. 

The Amstrad RS232 is the most popular 
interface. It comes with built- in CommStar soft¬ 
ware on rom and is all you need apart from a 
modem and lead. The Cage comma software 
also comes on rom, and is reputed to be much 
better than the CommStar viewdata software 
that comes with the Amstrad interface. 

My fashion sources tell me that at this time of 
year weft dressed comms freaks use the Cage for 
viewdata and a public domain program called 
Mex for scrolling boards, keeping the CommStar 
sox (bit of jargon there) for backup. 


Tape drive 


1 HOPE you can put a few couple of things 
straight for me. Is the Official Amstrad User Club 
open to the Republic of Ireland and can I add on a 
tape drive to my 6128? 

Charlie Fearon, 
Dundalk, Eire. 

LD: Sorry, Charlie, the User Club Inform me that 
Irish Amsters cannot join. But you can subscribe 
to ACU if you tike. See the order form at the rear 
of this issue. 

You can add a tape drive to your 6128 by 
buying an ordinary mono cassette deck that has 
a REMote socket. Plug it into the socket marked 
Tape on the left hand side of your computer. The 
lead is readily available from shops like Dixons, 
Tandy or any decent computer shop, 


Lost letter 


I WROTE to you two months ago and did not 
receive a reply. What happened to my letter? Did 
it get lost? Please could you answer this letter 
because I am running out of stamps and 
envelopes rapidly, 

I am writing to ask if you can give me the 
address for sending program listings to you. I 
also wonder if people get paid like other maga¬ 
zines do. H so, how much? 

One last question: What is the difference 
between a club member and a subscriber? 

Vy Tran t 
London A/2 

LD: Your letter didn't get lost. I remember 
reading it. But there is only so much space in 
ACU for me to answer letters, so every month 
my pile of unanswered letters grows. Per¬ 
sistence usually pays off. 

The address to send listings to is Liz Ting, 
Amstrad Computer User, 169 Kings Road, Brent¬ 


wood, Essex, CM 14 4EF. If your listing is pub¬ 
lished you will be paid loadsamoney. 

Members of the Official Amstrad Users Club 
who own CPCs receive ACU as part and parcel of 
their membership deal. The club is not run by 
ACU. The club is not owned by ACU. The dub 
newsletter is not written by the staff of ACU. 
The club sells our magazines for us, just like a 
newsagent does. Subscribers are paying us for 
12 issues of ACU in advance. That way they get 
to read the magazine a week before it hits the 
shops. 


Jump to it 


I am very interested in machine code program¬ 
ming. Please bring back the series on machine 
code for beginners, and keep up the Auntie John 
series. 

I bought the Soft $68 and am finding it very 
confusing. Why, for example, have a jumpblock 
of 260 or so three-byte instructions? Every third 
byte is a jump instruction; couldn't the call 
instruction read the two relevant address bytes 
and then jump to the routine pointed to by these 
bytes instead of jumping to a location and then 
jumping again to the routine? 

Richard Devlin, 
Shaws Lane, Nf. 

LD: Sorry Richard, I've had to limit you to one 
point. Two-page letters packed with questions 
and arguments get a little confusing. 

The machine code "call" instruction is always 
followed by two data bytes - the address to call 
When It gets to that address it executes 
whatever instructions it finds there, So if you 
need to jump elsewhere, you need a jump 
instruction. 

Machine code isn't like Basic, you can't have 
single instructions that carry out multiple oper¬ 
ations. One Instruction, one operation - that is 
what machine code is all about. 

Get hold of a book that shows you how these 
instructions and addresses are shunted about 
the various buses inside the CPU. Programming 
the 286, by Zaks, is the kiddie, but it's not cheap. 



PEOPLE who play jokes in February and then call 
them April Fools are normally regarded as idiots. 

Even your May issue comes out in March. Isn't 
it time you did something about your calendar or 
whatever makes you date your magazines the 
way you do. 

At. A. Dunn, 
Beckenham, Kent 

LD: But the April Foot was in our April issue. It's 
traditional to play an April Fool in the April issue. 
It's expected. One has to conform, you know, 
else the men in white coats come and drag you 
away. 

The reason we publish magazines way ahead 


Amstrad User October 1938 


Rage 13 


















































of their cover date is so we can all take three 
months off in the summer to go wind surfing or 
some other glamorous sport. 

In tiie winter we take another three months off 
to go skiing. Oh yes, and there's a week for 
Royal Ascot, two weeks for Wimbledon, and the 
entire grouse season. 


Young ffasher 


COULD you please tell me if there are any pro¬ 
grams for my 464 to make a light flash on and off, 
plus would it be easy to connect the light to my 
computer? 

Gtenn Smith {age 11}, 
Ivy bridge, Devon . 

LD: I don't know of any such program. To con¬ 
nect the Eight would involve building the necess¬ 
ary hardware. A micro electronics expert would 
find St easy, I suspect you'd find ft fairly difficult. 


Just pathetic 


RECENTLY I bought another computer magazine 
which cost £1.50, Although it was 25p dearer it 
had 132 pages, which is 64 more than some of 
your issues. There is also much more colour in it 
and page after page is not wasted with program¬ 
ming. They also give things away free; once a 
diary was given. This is more than can be said of 
AW. 

Altogether your magazine is just pathetic with 
stupid cartoons ail over the place wasting space. 
If I didn't have a subscription I would most 
certainly never buy ACU. 

Please try and make your magazine better. I 
think 64 pages far 25p is pretty good, don't you? 

PJohnston f 
Glasgow 

LD: I've done some research here, On average, 
the magazine you mention - the one that gave 
away the diary - prints the word "Amstrad" on 
about 26 pages, including adverts, every month. 
Put ail these pieces together into one magazine 
and you'd have about 10 to 12 full pages. That 
works out to around 13p per page. 

At that rate I think 68 pages for £1.25 is pretty 
good, don't you? 


Big disc trouble 


I SEEK information on adding a 5.25 second disc 
drive to a CPC 512$. t have the supply and a lead. 
When I switch on the motor spins and only half 
the signing on message appears - Basic 1,1 and 
Ready are missing. 

When I unplugged the drive the Basic 1.1 and 
Ready appeared, I plugged the drive back in and 
tried to access it by IB. The computer does not 
even try to read the disc but puts up the error 
message. Drive B disc missing, retry, ignore or 
cancel. 

I understand a 51/4 second drive can be fitted, 



but the edge connectors on the computer and 
disc drive must be different. Can anyone tell me 
what the edge connector pins on a double sided, 
low density, 40 track drive are? 

David RyailL 
50 Applegarth 
Fieldway 
New Addington 
Croydon, Surrey 


How do I expand? 


FOR months now I've been trying to find out how 
to use the expansion port on my 6128, I've tried 
everything to gain information. I've been to every 
computer shop in Bristol, every library, even to 
other nearby towns, but with no Juck, 

I've bought a couple if big scientific books on 
the 6128 but they innocently evade the subject. 

Jonathan Webb, 
Bristol. 

LD: To drive your expension port you're going to 
have to know quite a bit about machine code 
programming. You will need to know about 
addressing ports and stuff like that, and I know 
just the book you need. Understanding and 
Expanding your Amstrad CPC 464/664/6123 by 
Alan Trevennor is published by Sigma Press at 
£8.95. It Is an excellent book, 

Write to Sigma Press at 5 Alton Road, Wilm- 
slow, Cheshire, SK9 5DY and ask them to send 
you their latest catalogue. 

If you're not a machine code programmer, 
then you'd better get hold of the CPC firmware 
guide as well {Soft 963). The User Club can help 
you there on 091-510 3787. 


Father Brun 


BILL Tomlins'' review of BrunWord wasn't very 
fair. I have used this for over six months nowand 
find it very easy to use, and versatile too. 

He said he has used it for some time, but not 
long enough to get used to the editing and func¬ 
tion keys, as he moans about them, i have used 
two other word processors, and both use similar 
systems. 

Deleting, which he mentions twice, couldn't be 
easier or more efficient. And yes, you can delete a 
line, or part of one, or a block. You simply fix the 
two markers and delete. 

Complex layouts are simple, too, Once you 
have set your main margins you can indent or 
create temporary margins. 

The ram disc is also very useful for editing 
because you can store the parts of the text 
temporarily and call them at will. Or you can have 
related documents there with their own margins 
and page lengths set. 

The built-in dictionary is quick and efficient for 
correction of a document or looking up a word as 
you go along, My version loads along with the 
program - the whole lot in under 12 seconds 
which is quite amazing. 

It took me some time to realise and use the full 
potential of BrunWord, but that's true of most 


serious, well designed, flexible software, I like it, 
and I'm sure that others would agree that it is an 
excellent word processor that has powerful fea¬ 
tures at a very reasonable price. 

Revd Steven J Abram, BD , 
Aldershot 

LD: Bill Tomlins is a professional freelance jour¬ 
nalist, and the word processor is the tool of h is 
trade. BrunWord was pushed and shoved into 
the serious software market where it has to be 
judged against some pretty heavyweight rivals 
WordStar and Pretext for example. 

You can get used to any word processor - 
there are people still using the text editor in 
Maxam - so the fact that you like BrunWord 
doesn't make it a good word processor. I've used 
BrunWord. I found it couldn't keep up with my 
speed of typing, I went back to using Pretext 


Mouse wanted 


I HAVE recently bought the Advanced Art Studio 
and would like to use it with a mouse. I can or y 
find them with their own software package 
included, and 1 don't wart to pay extra for soft¬ 
ware F probabfy won't use. 

Please could you tell me if any companies 
manufacture a mouse without software suitable 
for the CPC6128? 

Dean Whitetey, 
Pudsey, kV Yorts. 

LD: Kempston makes a mouse for the CPC It 
comes with just enough software to make it 
work and costs £49,95. You can contact 
Kernpston on OflOB 677886. 


Help PIS 


WITH reference to the program listing Profes¬ 
sional Lawnmower Simulator in the August 
issue, my 6128 will not accept the commands 
i NORMAL, i INKS or i MODES. 

D Jennings, 
Hove, E.Sussex. 

LD: The machine code from lines 130 to 990 sets 
up the three new commands that you are having 
difficulty with. K you get no checksum errors 
reported, and if your machine won't recognise 
them after running the listing, it means you have 
typed in one of the data lines more than once, 
but with a different fine number. Check the data 
statements. 


Brief encounter 


Please note that you are at liberty to edit this 
letter to size. 

Wayscate Ltd 
South Godstone, Surrey. 

LD: Sorry. Ran out of room, 



Page 14 


Amstrad User October 1988 












































h 



A LEGEND IN GAMES SOFTWARE 


A-812387 touched down without a sound. Parachute hidden 
safely away, he surveyed quadrant ’X* with the steely gaze of a 
professional killer The task was hard, some would say impossible, 
but to a special operations agent the impossible was merely a way of life. 

The brief had been simple, recover the vital NATO documents—and 
of course, those three familiar words on which A-8123S7 thrived... 


LEAVE NO SURVIVORS! 


Coming soon on Spectrum Cassette £7.95, Amstrad Cassette £8.95, 
Disc £14.95 and Commodore €4Cassette 19.95. Disc £12.95. 


Telecomsoft First Floor, &4-76 New Oxford St London WCIA IPS. 

firebird and Firebird Logo are trademarks of British Tefecofrrmorrrrstiom PIC. 


SFF NS ON STAIYni;447 ATTHF P C. SHOW. PARIS COURT 14-1RSEPT. 

































































ADVENTURES 


L _/ 


C RL made the headlines when it had 
Dracuia issued with a British Board of Film 
Censors 15 certificate. The descriptive text 
and digitised pictures did not appear to he 
that horrific, but I for one was concerned that this 
action may eventually force other software 
houses to follow suit 

This could have meant more expensive games 
and possibly introduced long hold ups in the 
release of certain programs. Fortunately this 
does not seem to have happened, even though 
CRL has subsequently released other adventures 
with BBFC certificates. 

Dracuia was followed by Frankenstein and 
Whitman, all written by Rod Pike. CRL has now 
produced a Horror Compilation including all 
three. For some reason Wolfman never came my 
way until now. To set matters right, I have spent a 
few days in the depths of a nameless middle 
European country trying to solve its lycanthropic 
problems. 



Delve into adventures with Bill Brock 


Hair of the dog 


OLFMAN is a three part 
adventure with a similar 
feel to the previous two 
tales. Like them, it is 
divided into discrete sets 
of locations whose puzzles must be solved before 
moving on to the next. This sometimes causes a 
certain amount of frustration, as you have only a 
few I o cat ions to expl o re. 0 n the otherhand, there 


is that feeling of satisfaction when you solve the 
puzzles and move on. 

Despite all the publicity about the digitised 
graphics, they are few and far between. Most are 
not that imaginative and add very little to the 
adventure. 

As with previous games in the series, the 
parser is not always very friendly. It is often diffi¬ 
cult to persuade it to carry out what should be 
simple instructions. The vocabulary does not 
seem to be very extensive and some of the com¬ 
mands are a little awkward. 

Some complex commands a re required, but for 


the most part a simple verb and noun input will 
suffice. Multiple commands are not recognised. 
But the text is highly descriptive and atmospheric 
and the plot hangs together well 
For a II its faults, Wo If men is a good game with 
puzzles of only moderate difficulty. If you have a 
little patience to battle with the parser you will 
enfoy the ga me. Ju st re m em be r th at SEA RC H h as 
a different meaning to EXAMINE - and SAVE 
often, as you never know when David will turn 
wolf with decidedly lethal results. 



Cricket lovely cricket 


L TER NATIVE Software-with the 
help of the Dreaming Djinn, alias 
Charles Sharpe of Wizbiz and 
Smashed fame - has come up 
with something for frustrated 
cricket buffs to play during the football season.. 

Cricket Crazy is a two part adventure written 
using Incentive's Graphic Adventure Creator. Like 
many Charles Sharpe games, it has a novel 
approach to what could be an almost plausible 
situation. 

You are the England team manager during a 
trip to the island of St. Malcolm. Hidden deep in 
the seas of the Caribbean, the island is well and 
truly cut off from civilisation, With abundant 
natural food supplies and few worries other than 
ti e occasional hurricane, the islanders have 





Page W 


Amstrad User October 1968 










































4 


become obsessed with cricket 
Due to its small size and minimal political 
importance, St. Malcolm, for all its fanaticism for 
the game, has never managed to attract the 
attention of the major cricketing nations. Until, 
that is, the British Government realised that the 
island, home to millions of sea birds, was a vast 
natural source of guano. 

Accompanying the players is Giles Amfitz, a 
chinless wander from the lower echelons of the 
government. His task is to use the goodwill 
generated by the cricket tour to persuade the 
local officials to give os the sole rights to their 
extremely useful, if a bit smelly, natural resource. 
The game starts with the team travelling in a 



somewhat dilapidated DC-10 somewhere over 
the Caribbean, A stroll down the aisle will identify 
a few of the team members - flam Botham, Bill 
Edmonds and Larry Lamb appear to be the only 
well known players awake at this time. 

Another passenger, who is all too awake, is a 
shady foreigner, an employee of an Albanian fer¬ 
tiliser company and is trying to forestall develop¬ 
ments by hijacking the plane to his home 
country. In the ensuing melee the pilot catches a 
bouncer and is laid senseless. You now have to 
show your mettle and get the team safely to their 
destination. Having little faith in all-rounders, 
Giles Amfitz grabs the only parachute and floats 
away leaving you to cope with the situation. 

Once on terra firm a, you might think your 
troubles are over. Not so. Decisions, decisions... a 
manager's job is never dull, Quicksands, canni¬ 
bals, an introverted apeman and the local police 
all pose a few problems that you will have to 
solve before the big match. Do you, or don't you 
accept a friendly against the local youngsters? All 
in a day's work for some, hut can you rise to the 
occasion? 

Having solved these everyday details you may 
finally get to pari two and the reason for the team 
travelling half way round the world. At the last 
minute, Ike Gatting is unable to take the field. 
Who will now captain England's finest? You have 
probably guessed who has to stand in and do his 
heroic best. 

Not only must you tell Ram Botham how to 
bowl and the Gooch how to bat, but you must 
also decide on overall fielding tactics. The home 
team will do their darndest to win by an innings, 
and they have names that will bring back a few 
memories to followers of the noble art of the 
willow versus leather, 

Graphics are limited but colourful and, for the 
text-only among you, they can be turned off. The 
parser is fairly standard GAC r accepting multiple 
commands and, on occasion, somewhat more 
complex inputs than just verb and noun. A 


ADVENTURES 



reasonable vocabulary list for each part of the 
adventure is given on the cassette inlay, but 
expect to think of others for yourself. 

Cricket Crazy has a lot of humour and is as 
whacky as previous adventures from this fertile 
source. It is important to EXAMINE or SEARCH all 
sorts of things, and you must not be put off by a 
large number of boringly negative responses. As 
low cost adventures go r it has to be good value. 
There is nothing seamy except the bowling. 


In the classical mold 


T HOSE not faint of heart who 
want to travel back in time, 
take a lock at Topologika's 
Philosopher's Quest. Years 
ago this was an adventure that 
had thousands of BBC Micro users groaning in 
their sleep. 

You waves magic wand in an old antique shop 
and transport yourself to another dimension. 
Then follows a classic hurt through a maze of 
tunnels, caves and rooms. There is treasure, but 
the prime purpose of your trip is ro solve the 
excellent puzzles thoughtfully provided by writer 
Peter Kilworth. 

The game is disc only - CPC and PCW - and 
has no graphics, but plenty of descriptive text. 
The puzzles are ingenious, if not devious, and are 
fairly logical. 

As with many games in the classical mold, the 
vocabulary is not extensive and the way in which 
you can input commands is limited. There are 
good hints for those who lose their way, and as 


with other offerings from Topologika, they are on 
the whole hints, not answers. You have to inter¬ 
pret them for them to be useful. 

The hint sheet has a list of potential areas of 
difficulty listed as objects and locations. Each has 
a number that can be typed Into the computer; 
you then get a clue. You may be offered another 
on the same subject and the answers you get will 
be clearer the longer you persist 

There is no ram save, but saves to disc are very 
rapid and should be made frequently. EXAMINE 
is not recognised at all. 

Although this may seem a strange omission it 
is based on the belief that the normal use of 
EXAMINE is as an extra puzzle, rather than as an 
aid to the player It is assumed that the adven¬ 
turer would automatically took at his surroun¬ 
dings carefully, so all relevant information is 
given when you enter a location. 

Philosopher's Quest is a little dated in its pres¬ 
entation and command structure, but will give 
you a great deaf of satisfaction in playing, and 
elation if you can solve it without recourse to the 


clues, 


ratings 



\ w □‘.iTT'-a-v. \ 

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Quest 


Amstrad User October 198$ 


Page 17 

































EE A TURE 


L . T J 


Coding Kidz 


Christian Penny cate rests successfully on his laurels after 
being given just one month to convert a game to the CPC 


F OR a first release, my conversion of BMX 
Kidz for the Spectrum till the jackpot. There 
is no rest for the wicked, however, and 
when Coll n Fuidg e, the S i I verb! rd s up remo, 
offered me a further conversion of the game, this 
time for the CPC, who was i to refuse? 

No sooner said than done, my trusty Mont 
Blare fountain per was whipped out faster than a 
68000 on speed and was put to the dotted line. 

Due to me being new to big AE J s mighty 
machine, a little shopping was called for. The 
recipe chosen to develop BMX Kidz had the 
following ingredients: A few CPC 6128s, one 
Maxam assembler rom, one Advanced Art Studio 
and mouse, one DMP scratches 
Bright and early one Monday morning I called a 
team meeting - the team being the Zeit Corpor¬ 
ation, myself on code and Alex Smith on graphics 


- to sort out th'e specifications and draw up a 
timetable. 

At first we thought we could download the 
Spectrum graphics and modify them to take 
advantage of Arnold's superior facilities. But 
although both the Spec and the CPC use 3in 
drives, different disc formats have been adopted, 
A whole day was wasted battling through the 
firmware manual to find an elusive address in 
that infamous jump block so that we could access 
the PEus 3''s disc sectors and extract the graphics 
codes. 

Having got that far, we then discovered how 
the CPC J s rectangular Mode 0 pixels had 
stretched the graphics,, giving them the appear¬ 
ance of having been through a mangle. So much 
for modification, the graphics would have to be 
totally redone. 


"There there, Alex'", I consoled him. JJ You'll 
have them done in two shakes of a mouse's tail/ 1 
We agreed on sizes and protocols for the 
sprites and backgrounds and Alex went away, 
leaving me to get on with the business of per¬ 
suading the Amstrad that it, too, could Hde 3 
BMX, just hke the CBMG4 and the Spectrym. 

Choices 

The first choice I had to make was oetween a 
hardware scrolled or a software scro ad playing 
area. The latter would have meant the use of a 
work area and kissing goodbye to ha F the avail¬ 
able memory. Since the graphics a one occupied 
some 28k, this would have left precious Hale 
space for my code, 

Hardware it had to be. I delved into the 



Page IS 


Amstrad User October 19&8 























firmware manual once more. 

T he answer lay in offsets, which forced me to 
work in a modulo 2048 environment. This not 
only affected the generation of background 
graphics but also that of sprite placement. Which 
brings me quite nicely to the bane of every pro¬ 
grammer's life, the raster. 

Sprites 

Placing a sprite is not just a case of shoving some 
pbtelly perfect graphic on the screen. No sireee, 
the background must be restored as well. 

Writing directly to the screen means that all 
changes must take place without the raster dis¬ 
turbing it. Otherwise the sprites will flicker, The 
bikes and pickups themselves are 12 x 16 pixels 
in size and are managed by a stack manipulation 
routine. With 66 r 000 clock cycles available 
between raster interrupts, I found my sprite 
routine could only handle six sprites on screen 
without inducing flicker. And because the 
hardware scroll affects the whole of the screen at 
was also necessary to restore the score line in 
order to keep it stationary. 

Meanwhile Alex had been busying himself with 
drawing the sprites. These had to be redone due 
to a mix-up over the palette. But he turned this 
setback to our advantage, and amended them to 
make the wheels rotate. Then he started on the 


backgrounds. These took about s fortnight 
compared with a week for the sprites. 

That done, it was time to do the ramps, They 
were originally going to be twice as wide as they 
are now, but by that time memory was starting to 
run short, and we wouldn't want to deprive you 
of a front panel now, would we? 

Not being one to stop a man while he's 
working, I let Alex get on with the job of coding 
up the level data “the sequence of ramps and 
background graphics. As they were loosely 
copied from the Spectrum, they only took about 
three days to design and debug. 

Another few days were spent listening to the 
playtesters' comments and modifying the tracks 
until just four weeks and three days after signing, 
the day of judgement arrived, 

The game 

In BMX Kidz you have to race over five 
undulating tracks, competing against three other 
kidz, performing stunts and wheelies as you go. 
And as if that wasn't enough, the whole thing is 
against the clock, 

Pedalling is thirsty work, and to keep your 
strength up you must ride through giant size cans 
of Jump Cola. Moreover, your wheels are not that 
strong and a bad landing or collision with the 
other kidz will cause some of your spokes to 


break, necessitating replacement, Th : s is 
achieved by riding into larger-than-life sized 
wheels. 

To pass on to the next level you must perform 
all the stunts required of you in the time allowed, 
and pass the finish line in first place. 

Judgement day 

As I was in bed recovering from 72 hours of 
non-stop coding, it was left to Alex to go down to 
Silverbcrd's offices in New Oxford Street to find 
out what the CBM progger Gl-Jo thought of it. 
Much to our relief he liked it and only ordered us 
to make a few minor alterations. That took us a 
couple af days and then the game was ready to 
goto be mastered. A few days later we learnt that 
the masterer couldn't master our master because 
it was, smiles modestly., over protected. 

Sigh. There's no rest for the wicked, However 
I'm nothing if not wicked, and when Colin Fuidge 
offered me another contract, this time for a 
jumpy little game entitled Scuba Kidz, who was I 
to refuse? 


BMX Kidz was programmed for the CPC by 
the Zeit Corporation. It will be released next 
year on a £1.99 compilation tape of three 
Siiverbird budget games. 



A ms trad User October 1988 


Page 19 


























• Sound Sampler, Drum 
Machine. Midi Interface in one unit 

• Complete with instructions, Headphones 
and Microphone 

• Demonstration Cassette also included 

• Disk version available at £59.95 inc. VAX 


SPEECH SYNTHESIZER 


MEMORY UPGRADES 


Hi • Speech Synthesiser 
and Powerful Stereo 
lIPP^^ Amplifier 

• Easy to use Software included 
# Complete with two 4''' Pod-Mou nted 
Speakers 

a ROM version available at £44.® 


+ 64K upgrade Module tor CPC 464/664 
— £49.95 inc. VAT 

• 256K upgrade Module for CPC 464/564/ 
512B — £129.95 inc. VAT 

* 256K Silicon Disk Module for CPC 464/ 
664/6128 — £149,95 inc. VAT 

a No extra Power Supply required 


a Sophisticated Graphics Package 
a Colour Palette. Nudge Control, Brush Choice 
Text Handling 

a Magnify. Shrink, Circles. Rectangles, Lines, 
Curves and Colour Fill 
a ROM version available at £29.95 


RAM DELTA 
JOYSTICK 


TV TUNER 


a Turns your Amstrarf Colour Monitor into 
a Colour TV 

• On/Off/Volume Control 

a Brightness and Colour Controls 
a Full TV Channel Tuning capabilities 

• TV Aerial required 


a For use with PCW 6256 
and 8512 

a RS252C Serial Interface 
a Centronics/Parallel Interface 
a Includes Centronics Printer Cable 


a Six Mioro$witches ^^1 
a Two Year Guarantee 
a Auto-Centre Control Stick 
a Standard 9-Pin Connector 


HOW TO ORDER 

BY TELEPHONE — 0252 850085/850031. ACCESS/VISA Cardholders welcome. 

BY POST — RAM Electronics (Fleet) Ltd., Unit 16, Redfields Industrial Park, Redfield Lane 
Church Crookham, Hants GUI3 ORE 
Cheques payable to RAM Electronics (Fleet) Ltd.' 

RAM Products are also available from Boots • Tandy ■ W.H. Smiths and other Good Comput 






£19*95 me. vat 


1 £34.95 me. vat 




















































































I N the January 1988 issue I asked whether 
anyone had any solutions to the the prob¬ 
lem of the Stamatcher program only doing 
screen dumps when used with DM Pi prin¬ 
ters. Simon Shaw from Kent writes that he has 
recently bought the program and has been 
doing some hacking 

He has come up with a solution that works with 
his Panasonic KX-P1081 printer. As the Pan¬ 
asonic is Epson compatible, it should also work 
with other Epson-compatible printers such as the 
DMP200D or DMP216Q. 

Me enclosed two dumps from the program and 
they seem to work well. The relatively small alter¬ 
ations required are shown in Figure I- Many 
thanks, Simon. 



1. Load, but do not run the Basic file 
called BASICA. 

2, Edit line 1800 to read: 

nm IF sSo® then 60S US 28000: If fcS=B 
9 THEN ORIGIN 0,0,0,639,399,3Z:PD 
KE 16*59,10:POKE 16*60,0:POKE *26 
45,15:POKE 42644,0:POKE 42671,64: 
PRINTS, (NllS(Z7)fCHftiC65+tHIIJ(7I: 
CALL 42593:ORIGIN 0,32,0,639,187, 
32-RETURS ELSE RETURN 


3. Resave the program, 

Figure!: Procedure to m$k$ Starwatcher program 
work with'an Epson compatible printer 


The CP/M GET command 

Peter Ceresole has written 
to me before about having 
problems with page 
lengths in Brainstorm. As a 
result of using the CP/M 
SID program to solve the 
problem, he has started to experiment with CP/M 
and its multitude of utility programs. 

Me has a copy of CP/M The Software Bus, but 
finds this book even more unfriendly than the 
dreaded A> prompt and wants to know 1 if there 
are any friendly CP/MI books. 

I have to admit that 1 haven't come across any. 
One of the reasons is that CP/M is now an old 
operating system. In its heyday computers were 


expensive and largely used by professionals. 

As a result, with a relatively small market, 
already conversant with computer systems, most 
of the books tended to be of the technical 
reference sort. 

The book that I use is called The Amstrad CP/M 
Plus, by Clarke and Powys-Lybbe. It contains a 
wealth of information, both regarding the CP/M 
commands and for writing CP/M programs, but is 
largely of a technical nature again. 

Peter Ceresofe has also been making use of the 
GET command, and had a problem with it rot 
doing what he wanted. GET can be used to tell 
the computer where to get input. Normally input 
is obtained from typing it in at the keyboard, but 
by using the GET command, CP/M can be told to 
get it from a file. If you typed: 


GET FILE HTINPUT ESVSTEHJ 


CP/M would immediately look for the file called 
M YIN PUT ana take the contents of each line as if 
it had been typed in at the keyboard. 

This can be extremely useful, as it can allow 
you to call up a program and simulate typing in 
the sequence of commands required to, say., load 
a data file and select certain default options 
before returning control to the keyboard once the 
commands in the file have been fully read, 

When I use the At Last Plus database I always 
want to follow the same sequence of commands 
to load a particular data file and then go into the 

► 



Amstrad User October 1988 


Page 21 




















































Cl 

INK 


j 

mmm 



Scan option, so I have a file called ATLAST.GET 
containing: 


C3USE NE1BER !£ 


I also have a submit file called ATLAST.SUB r 
containing the line: 


GET FILE ATLAST.GET 'SYSTEM] 


When I type SUBMIT ATI AST it immediately 
starts reading from the file and loads DBUSE, 
then the data file called MEMBER, and then 
selects the Scan option. Simple and efficient. It 
will not work with all programs, though it does 
with most. 

Peter's problem was just that he was not using 
the SYSTEM parameter. 

Other options available with GET are the CON¬ 
SOLE command, which may be used in the file 
that GET is reading to force output back to the 
keyboard, and also ECHO and NO ECHO. The 
default is ECHO meaning that commands are dis¬ 
played on screen unless the NO ECHO command 
is issued. 


o 


DR Logo 

H.Counsel! of Rochdale has 
been experimenting with 
DR Logo and finds that he 
cannot get a screen dump 
of any pictures he has 
drawn. I fear that 1 have 
never found the time to use Logo, although I do 
remember reading somewhere about the prob¬ 
lem with getting hard copy screen dumps, I know 
you can get text printouts with no problem, but 
has anyone got the answer to how to do a 
graphics dump, please? 


GAG and rums 

Ruth Sard writes from 
Southern Australia with a 
number of queries. First of 
all she wants to know 
which rom software might 
cause her machine to 
crash. 

Good quality rom software should not cause 
any problems with crashing at all. The worst that 
should happen is that you might need to turn off 
any extra roms to run some memory-hungry pro¬ 
grams. Most roms provide d command to turn 
themselves, and often other roms, off. 

Unfortunately, one or two not very intelligent 
programs perform a sort of soft reset in their 
loading process, and in doing so turn the roms 
back on again. In these cases the only solution is 
to physically disable the roms, normally by dis¬ 
connecting them. 

Ruth's second question is whether she can 
make use of the dk'tronlcs expanded memory to 
enable her to write larger adventures with less 
trouble. Sorry. Unless programs make provision 
for using banked ram, there is little you can do to 
make use of it, 

The third question concerns using user defined 
characters within GAC. While Ruth can define, 
load and use characters in normal circumstances. 



she finds that once she has loaded GAC they are 
no longer available. Alex Aird of Birmingham has 
sent in a solution to this one. See Listing I. 

Alex says that the problem with GAC games is 
that they can only be RUN from Basic. What 
needs to be done is to LOAD then CALL a GAC 
game, This has to be done using machine code, 

The disc system is initialised by GAC and 
claims a chunk of memory for its own use from 
&A2FC to &A7FF, So effectively HIMEM is at 
&A2FB, much lower than the normal &A619 - on 
the 6178-at switch-on. 

These addresses all change if a rom box is 
fitted, so it might be advisable to lower HIMEM 
even more to allow for the possibility of expan¬ 
sion roms. 

ln line 1050 of Listing I, the number S is the 
length of the filename, If your adventure has a 
shorter name change the number to suit, if you 
do change it, don't forget to also change the 
number of bytes being read in line 1010. Don't 
use names longer than eight characters even if 
you are writing on a 464. 

If your GAC adventure is to be loaded from 
tape then change the 8 in line 1010 to a zero and 
forget about line 1090 which is the name itself in 
Hexadecimal form. The name Alex has put there 
is "FILENAME" (&46=F, &49=L and so onl. All 
you have to do (low is design a character set. 


10 GQSUB "Bit 
15 ■ 

20 SYMBOL AFTER 32 ar whatever 

30 SYMBOL 32,M0/70,74,12&,164,12M 

40 SYMBOL .... etc 
50 SYMBOL .... etc 

m ■ 

1000 FALL SBF00 
1035 

1010 FOR addr=gBF00 TO &BF0042S 
1020 READ US 

'030 POKE addr,VALtT+bJ) 

1040 NEXT:RETURty 
1045 

1050 DATA 06,08 

1060 DATA 21,17,M,11,00,a8,cd,77 
10T0 DATA he,21,40,00,c.d,83,bc,cd 
1080 DATA 8T,bt,c3,2c,1f 
1090 DATA 46,49,4e,45,4e,41,4c,45 

Listing I: Skeleton GAC &dveniure loader t.iat allows 
character sets to be user-defined 


Pascal chip for 6128 

Andri Pavlov of Ilford is 
writing a program In Pascal 
lor her GCSE final exams. 

Unfortunately she only has 
access to the school com¬ 
puters at certain times and 
wants to know where she can buy a Pascal chip 
for her 6128. 

Only one rom is available that claims to be 
Pascal, but this is only a very small subset of a 
Pascal-type language, ft has no facilities for using 
Ascii text files and will only work with its own 
primitive editor, so I would certainly not recom¬ 
mend it. 

The solution is to get Pascal on disc. Several 
versions are available ranging from HiSofl Pascal 



-which is a little non-standard in some respects- 
to Turbo Pascal from Borland. 


Expanding memory 

Rolf Wordeide from* 

Norway wants to know 
whether he will be able to 
access all the extra 
memory from within 
Tasword 6128 if he buys a 
256k memory expansion unit. The answer is no, 
only the first bank of 64k of memory will be 
accessible. There is no easy way to change the 
situation. 

J.Banks of Aberdeen has a disc drive for his 464 
and says he will need to buy a memory expan¬ 
sion unit if he is to be able to use certain pro¬ 
grams. His query is whether he can just buy the 
256k expansion unit, or whether he must buiid up 
to it with 64k units. 

The answer i& that the 256k unit does 
everything the 64k unit does, so if he wants 256k. 
then he should get it. 

Having said that, not many commercial pro¬ 
grams will make use of more than the first 64k so 
the advantages of the bigger unit tend to be 
restricted largely to use with your own programs, 

Basic books 

Oil dear. Peter Smith has 
scoured the J arrow coun¬ 
tryside far and wide for the 
two books \ mentioned by 
Ian Sinclair, with a total 
lack of success. He asks for 
the ISBN numbers. 

The book numbers are 0-00-3B3300-3 
(Advanced Amstrad CPC6128 Computing! and 
0-00-383120-3 (Amstrad Computing!. Both books 
are published by Collins. 


No time to lose 

Nick McGregor of Norwich 
has sent me a small routine 
to reset the CPC's TIME 
function to zero from Basic, 

Nick points out that it is 
important that the Pokes be 
left in this order for the routine to work correctly, 


100 PRINT 

110 a-TlME; PRlNTTIME =‘;a 
120 PRINT 

110 PRINTPress any key to reset TIME 
to zero... 

140 PRINT;CALL £B3lfl 

150 POKE &B8B7,0 4*4 = POKE AB1AM 

160 POKE £3366 ,% ’ 464 = POKE £0139,0 

170 POKE £B305,0 ' 464 = POKE &B13B,0 

130 POKE &0334,0 ' 464 = POKE &B1S7,0 

190 a=TIME;PitINrnME =‘;a 

202 PRINT:END 





So there you are - never let anyone tell you 
that you can't do something from Basic! 



Page 22 


Amstrad User October W88 







































PROGRAMMING 


Z ........ 

:r ; ~ ■" : / 


ics to simulate an orrery. It can be used to predict 
the motion of the planets with incredible accur¬ 
acy. You don't have to understand these laws to 
use the prog ram r all you need do is type it in and 
run it. You will then be asked to supply the 
following data: 

• Outer or inner planets: Because of the widely 
differing radii of their orbits, all nine planets 
cannot be displayed on screen at the same time. 
You can press the letter 0 to display Jupiter, 


Satu rn, U ranu s, N eptutie a nd PI uto - with a small 
diagram of the Earth's motion to remind you 
where it is - or the letter I to display Mercury, 
Venus, the Earth r and Wars, 
i The date: Type it in using the formal DD.M* 
M,YYYY. For example: 1,1,1959 or 25,12,1855. 

• Pause time: This is the delay in seconds 
between each frame, 

• Step time: The program displays the position 
of the planets on day DD, then jumps forward by 


S days, where S is the step time. As the inner 
planets move relatively quickly, a step time of six 
or seven days is sufficient, whereas you will need 
a step time of 100 to 2DO days if you want to see 
the outer planets moving at any speed greater 
than a crawl. 

If everything is OK, you should see the planets 
from a viewpoint somewhere above the Solar 
System about half way towards Alpha Centsuri. 

The date will be continually updated as the 
planets slowly move around the Sun, leaving a 
trail as they move. If you wait long enough you 
should see that the planets' orbits are elliptical 
rather than circular. 

While this frenzied activity is going on you can 
press P to pause the program, R to restart it, E to 
return to Basic and 0 to display some technical 



universe 


CF2] 1270 yr=year;im=nnnth 

[49] 1280 IF i*onth<3 THEN yr-yr-l:iia=m 
□r 12 

[£El 1290 a=rr\1M:b=Z-a+aU:«=lMm65 
,2!>*yr):d;lHTnM(HM+<RQ+n> 

[04] 1300 jJLian=D^c + d4day + 1720994.5 
[17] 1310 |uLday-juUan-2U42Ji.5 
[671 1320 GOSUS 2050 

[AD] 1330 CIS:ORIGIN 320,200:CALL &B3D 
E,1 

CDF] 13 40 TAG:MOVE-8,8iPRINT CHRM240) 

;:mOFF 

[26] 1350 PEN 3:LOCATE 1,1:PRIN! name* 
n planets’ 

[E4] 1360 PEN 1 rLOCATE 1,7:1F planets 
■’0'THEN PRlNmRTr 
C9I1] 1370 PEN 2:LOCATE 1,25 
[43] 1300 PRIIIFP ■ pause D - see data 
R - rerun E - end 1 ; 
im 1390 NHILE NOT flag 
IfiB] '-400 PEN 1;60SUB 2110 
CF0] 1410 FOR z=1 TO nun 
»4] 1420 LOCATE 30^11PRINT USING"## & 
####■'; day jpinont^ea r 

[29] H30 na=0,965647332+jutday/eLt fz, 

n 

[5AJ 1440 na = Fh.rar,geC r ia) 

[C43 1450 nb'[na*elt(r / 2)-eltCz,3))*ra 
dian 

[3-D1 1460 the'ta=na + Ctyod&g+tLt(z,4)*3I 
N(nhl Kelt (2/2) 

[F83 1470 tf , eta=FNrangettfitta) 

[523 1480 phi=CthetB-eLt(i,3))*radian 
[Fll 1490 ra = Ce LtCz^5 3 i,4>*eit 

tz,43 >>/C1+elt(z,43«C0SCphi>> 

[89] 1500 rat7>-ratth(z)-theta 
[ED] 1510 px Cz)=st«le+r^H0S(theta*rad 
iart) 

[50] 1523 py(z)=scal.e+ra*SIN(theta*rad 
i an) 

[FT] 1530 NEX- 
[FBJ 1540 FOR z=1 TO nun 
M5] 1 5 5 0 GOSUS 1990 
[08] 1560 NEXT 

[7A] 1 570 If planetS=’0"THEN GGSUB 171 

0 

[78] 1563 juLdar juLday+sti*e 
[09] 1590 j jL ian=juLian+stine 

[AE] 1600 IF NOT INKE H27)THEN SOUND 1 
,I00:SOSU0 1820 

[64] 1610 IF NOT INKEY16DTHEN SOUND 1 
,200:G0SUB I860 

[64] 1620 IF NOT INKEf(50)THEN SOUND 1 


,430:fLag*-1 

C 0F] 1630 If NOT I NICEYC5&)TMEN MODE 1: 

CALI BHC02;END 
[06] 1640 CALL 203,pause 
[00] 1650 FOR z=1 10 nuit 
[14] 1660 G0SUB 1990 
[48] 1670 PLOT px,py,3 
[10] 1660 NEST 
[69] 1690 UEND 
CF£] 1700 RUN 

[62] 1710 na-fl.985647332*ju iday/l.0000 
4 

fSA] 1720 na=FNrangeCna> 

[3B1 1730 nb~(na-3.76286301 Wadi an 
[31] 1740 theta=na+(tuo(leg*fl.0fi718*SI 
htnbJJ+98.83354 
[ F01 1750 tceta=f Nrangs {theta) 

[DEI 1760 ORIGIN 0,3,0,76,308,372:CLG 
0 

[9AJ 1770 ORIGIN 36,343,0,640,0,400 
[20] 1783 PLOT 0,0,1:PLOT 2,0:PLOT 2,2 
:PLOT 0,2 

[3D] 1790 PLOT 30+[O${theta*radian),30 
+SIN(theta*radian) / 2 
[29] 1800 ORIGIN 320,200 
[6E] 1310 SETURN 
[A2] 1820 BORDER l 
[DC] 1330 WHILE NOT INKEH27) :UEND 
[8E] 1840 BORDER 3 
[7A] 1850 RETURN 

[D5] 1860 CALL 209,SC000,84000,84000 
[93] 1870 WIND0y#1,5,35,6,20:PAPER#t,3 
:PEN#1,0:CLS#1 

[BA] I860 LOCATED,4,2:PR1NT#1,'PLANET 
THETA RADIUS’ 

[983 1890 PEk#1,1;start=-4+£rui»-5J 

EFD] 1930 FOR a=1 TO nuit 

[SB] 1910 LQDATE#1,4,2+a*2 

[703 1920 PRIHTfMSiHG'A \ ###. 

#*,?###’; r 'ia[r?S(startra),th(.a) 
,raCa) 

[07] 1930 NEXT 

[79] 1940 PEN#1,0iLOCATE#1,5,14:PHI NT# 
1/Press SPACE to continue’ 

[7p ] 1950 WHILE INKEYC475 : WEN ft 
[8D] 1960 SOUND 1,25 
[F4] 1970 CALL ?09,44000,&[000,S4000 
[85] 1980 RETURN 
[5F] 1990 px=px(z) :py=py£z) 

[.A61 2003 CALL &BC59,t 

[3B] 2010 PLOT pj(,py,2:PLOT p*#Z,py 

[B33 2023 PLOT px,py42:PL0T pn*2,py+2 

[6E] 2033 CALL &BC59 


[68] 2340 RETURN 

[C2] 20 50 IF nuji=4 THEN RESTORE 2190 E 
LSE RESTORE 2230 
[FE] 2063 FOR a=1 TO nun 
[fill 2070 FOR b=1 TO 5 
[03] 2030 READ elt(a,b) 

[FB3 2090 NEXT D,a 

[5E] 2100 RETURN 

[41] 2113 f-R0UND(juLian) 

[38] 2120 IF f<2299161 THEN a=f ELSE g 
= IWT C(f-1867216.25)736524*25):a=f 
*l4$-g\4 

[ 621 2 1 33 t>=a+1524;t=INTUh-122*137365 
.25) :c-1 NT 1365. ?5*c) ;e=INT{ ( b-cs) / 
30*6001):day^trd-INTC30.6001*a)*j 
uiian-f 

ED9] 2140 IF e>13*5 THEN <onth=*-U EL 
$E nonth=e-1 

[03] 2150 If c<2.5 THEN year=c-4?15 EL 
3E year=c-47l& 

tF 53 21 60 IF monthcJ THEN y«r=year*1 
[Ffl] 2170 jiqrisMlDJCJanFebMarAprHayJu 
nJuLAugSepOctNotfDic r ,(iBQnth>-1) *3* 
1,3) 

E76] 2130 RETURN 

[7F3 2190 DATA *24085,231,2973,77.1442 

128.. 2056306..3870986 

[C7] 2200 DATA *61521,355.73352,131.28 
95792,-0067826,.7233316 
[ESI 2210 DATA 1.00004,98.83354,102*59 
6483,-016718,1 

[47] im DATA 1.88089,126.30783,335,6 

908166.. 0933865.1.5236883 

[18] 2230 DATA 11*86224,146.966365,14. 

0095493,.0434658,5,202561 
L94] 2240 DATA 29,45771,165.322242,92* 

6653974.. 0556155.9*554747 

[68] 2250 DATA 34.01247,228,0708551,17 
2*7363238,,0463232,19.21814 
[64] 2260 DATA 164.79558,260.3578998,4 
7.8672148,-0090021,30.10957 
[313 2270 DATA 247.691,209*439,223,522 
4, ,2502,39.409 

[F3-] 2280 DATA Mercury,Venus,Earth,Nar 
s,Jupiter,Saturn,Uranus,Neptune,P 
L u to 

[64J 2290 DATA CD,19,BD,lB,7A,B3,20,FS 

,C9 

[231 2300 DATA DMMMMM1,D0,5E 

,02 

[0D1 2310 DATA DP,56,@3,I)D,6£,04,DD,66 
[FA] 2320 DATA ED,B0,C9 


Amstrad User October ) 988 


Page 25 




















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Page 26 


Amstrad User October 1988 


•THE OFFICIAL AMSTRAD USER CLUB & AMSOFT MAIL ORDER 

































































Stardodger II — the 
BCPL version 

Stewart Russell shows you how to program the same 
game three times, in three very different languages 


O NCE the Basic version of Stardodger 
worked to my satisfaction - which took 
longer than expected - the program 
was rewritten using Amor's BCPL 
compiler, BCPL was the forerunner of the oh-so- 
trendy C language beloved by computer sci¬ 
entists and other deviants Unlike C, BCPL is 
quite readable, yet it still enforces a carefully 
structured programming style. 

This is due to its syntax and the lack of error 
checking. Care must be taken or the compiler will 
merrily chum out guff without a single beep of 
displeasure. 

The BCPL Stardodger took far less time to write 
than the Basic version, mainly because all the 
program logic had already been worked out. 

Dynamic elegance 

A particularly neat feature of BCPL is the case 
structure - SWITCHON..INTO..CASE, used here 
in the collision detection routine - which is simi¬ 
lar to, but more elegant than, Basic's ON..GOTO, 
Nearly all the variables used in this program 


Amor BCPL compiler 
Output file name? STAR BCPL 

-> OPTION $-,B- 
-> GET'ALIBBDR" 

-> GETAUBHDRr 
-> GET ,J AMSDOS" 

-> GEFSTAREK3J.B" 

->. 

Phase 1 complete. Tree size 15652 
Phase 1 errors: 0 

Phase 2 complete. Code size 9631 
Phase 2 errors: 0 
Code origin 370 


are static variables; this means they are always 
available to any part of the program. Dynamic 
variables - such as f used in the pause procedure 

- disappear after being finished with, Unlike 
Basic, all BCPL variables and constants, known as 
manifests, have to be defined before use. 

Also unlike Basic, which has string, integer and 
real variables, BCPL has only one type of variable 

- the "word", or 16 bits. This makes it ideal for 
implementation on a home micro, 

It does have some add conventions though. 
For instance, the asterisk is thought of as a con¬ 
trol character. It cannot be represented as simply 
* but has to be written as ** before it is accepted. 
Gripes aside, BCPL is a lovely language to use. 

You can use any Ascii text editor for producing 
the source code, indenting the text is not necess¬ 


ary, but helps to show the levels of the program. 
After saving the text-call it STARDQJ.0 - it may 
be an idea ta dry run it through the compiler 
without GETting any of the libraries. As long as 
only Undefined identifier errors are produced the 
text should be OK. But beware of spelling mis¬ 
takes in procedure names, as these cannot be 
checked for until the final compilation stage. 

You must first invoke the compiler from disc, 
using FI UN "DISC and then 3 BCPL. Follow the 
compiler dialogue in the panel, but note that 
minor differences may occur in the numeric 
values produced, 

#j Next month, in the final pert of this series, well 
look at the assembly language version. 

> 







Compiling the BCPL version - the dialogue 


Routine 

Basic 

lines 

BCPL 

procs 

Initialisation 

20-70 

start 

Print title screen 

90-170 

start 

Draw game screen 

180-450 

drawscr 

Main game logic 

470-530 

start 

Print game over screen 

550-600 

start 

Print success screen 

620-680 

start 

Wait for keypress routine 

700-760 

wait key 


The main (valines - j compphsim 


Amstrad User October 1988 


Page 27 

























p 


G 



ff S-tardodoer using 

Arnor's BCPL conpi Ler. 

£3 



// Written by Stewart C Russell of Edible Conputers, 




// Requires ALibhdr 

, A1 -hhdr1 and Ansdos Libraries, 

LET startO BE // *** 

t f 

Main Routine *+* 

FES’ 



U 


S( 



moded) 


star = 



bordertfl, 0) 


d&Lar s 3 

// Loop delay in 1/3&0ths of a sec. 


ink(0, 0, 03 


S) 



inkd, 26, 263 





ink(3, %, 0) 

// Set up inks and mode 

STATIC 



located^, 1) 


5( 



wri test'S t a rdodger 1 ') 

// Print title screen 

increment ■ 5 

// Number of stars added per screen 


Located, 53 


xstar - 0 

If X-pcsitior pf star 


writest!void the kiLLer 

Asterisks, and seek the’) 

ystar 1 0 

// Y-position of star 


Locatefd, 6) 


dy “ 4 

// Y-positior increment 


wri tesf’wondrous Nextscreen Gap [") 

d 1 5 

// Start no of Stars per screen 


Located?, 133 


done = 0 

// Numoer of screers completed 


writesl’LFse SHIFT to climb") 

nent = 0 

ft Next screen r ember 


per(2) 


status z 0 

// Status, 1 - dead, 0 - not dead 


Locateti, 183 


ks = ft 

ff Shift key status 


wri tesCWritten : n BCPL by Stewart C Russell") 

c 2 0 

// E n k status for to L Lisi on 


Locste(9, 193 


y = 0 

// Col Li & 1 or detection y-pos i ncrement 


urites ("Edible Computers 

25/4/88") 

13 



pent 1) 





uaitkeyf 3 

// Press any key message 

LET waitteyO BE 

// Prints message and waits for key 


status := ft 

// Resit pointers 

if 



q ;= 5 

// to screen ft, status = alive 

LocatelS, 253 



drawscr(q) 

// Draw screen 1 Hive stirs) 

wri c es C'Press ary 

key to continue,") 


S( 


WHILE keyvalidU 

DO LOOP // Clear buffer 


ks := 0 

// Clear key status variable 

UNTIL kmaLidn 

CO LOOP ft Continue On keypress 


drawr(4, dy) 

// Draw line unit 

S3 



pausefde Lay) 

// To allow for reactions 




ks ;= inkey(21) 

// Get shift key status 

LET pause!Length) BE // Pauses for length/30B seconds 


TEST ks EQ - 1 THEN, dy 

:= 4 ELSE dy - 4 // Move up 

St 



y dy / 2 

// Get y-pos in front of lire 

LET t = timet) 

if Get current time 


c gtestrfS, y3 

// Test point in front of line 

UNTIL tiitO ED t 

* Length DO LOOP ff Haft until length 1 




1) 

ff units have e Lapsed, 


SU1TCHON c INTO 

t ( 

// Act or ink no. accordingly 

LET drawScrtq) BE 

ff Draw the screer with q’ stars 


CASE 0: y := - 1 * 

y // If ink 0 

if 



mover! - 2, y) 

// go back to old cooros, 

ngdeff) 



END CASE 


drawr(629, 0) 





drawr{fl, 170) 



CASE 3: mode!13 

// If ink 3 

never{3, -60! 



locatet16, 13 

// congratulate player 

draurfB, 1693 



wri tes ("WELL DONE") 

// on completion. 

drawr! - 629^ 0) 



lgcete(l0, 13) 


drauMB, - 399) 



wri t es ("Stand by for 

Screen ") 

dr-aur2) 



next ;= (q f increment) ■+ 1 

drswr{627, 0) 



writen(next) 

// Print neit screen no 

drawr(0, 168) 



q := q + increiient 

// Increase no of stars 

mover(0, 60) 



waitkey (3 


G ray r(B ^ 167) 



drawscr(q) 

// Draw the next screen 

drawrf * 625, 0) 



END CASE 


drawr(0, - 399) 


4 






DEFAULT: status 1 

// Default to dying 

FOR s - 1 TO q DO 

t ( 


EN&CASE 

i) 


» i 

ustar := Handout) REH 5613 * 50 ft Get rnd x-pos Hr * 


S3 


rsndoimed : = xstar + tineO // Feed random seed 


REPEATJNTIL status FiE 0 

// Repeat loop while not dead 

ystar Handout) REM 361) + 20 // T-pcs 




rancomseed ;= rar dorr sees - tsstar REM ystar + q) // &eeo 


node(ID ff Player is dead if ue've cot to hire 

movefxstar y ystar) // Move to rnd position 


locate(16, 1) 


our Hits tar) 

// Plot a * there 


writes ('YOU GOOFED") 

pr 

S3 



lecate!5, 13) 





writes("Number of Screens completed = ’) 

gpentJ) 

// Draw lines in ink 3 at end of screen 


done := (q f increment) 

- 1 

neve(637, 0) 

ff to check for screen completion 


writenfdone) 

// Print no of screens conpieted 

drawr !0, 40ft) 

// (These Lines are invisible) 


waitkeyU 


drawr(2, 03 



1) 


drawr(0, - 400) 



REPEAT 

// Repeat outer Loop of ‘start’ 

gpenf1) 

// Set pen to white again 

$) 



r»ove(0, 200) 

ft Hove to line start position 






Page 28 


Amstrad User October 1988 

























I was impressed by the fact that Star have now 
produced a great looking little budget printer with a 
24 pin head. 

I was impressed by its excellent quality—the 
8 resident fonts available and its high density letter q ual ity 
helped me produce a really professional mailshot, 

1 was impressed by the extremely swift draft elite speed 
of 170cps and LQ elite at57cps and the standard 7k buffer, 

] was impressed by the special push-tractor feature 
that a.l I ows th e LC2440 th e I owe st poss i b I e tear o ff an d i ts 
ability to 'park' 1 continuous paper and load single sheets 
automatically-so the re's no need to remove the continuous, 
I was impressed by the touch-butt on front control 
panel that makes using the printer an absolute d ream. 

But most of alb f was particulary impressed with myself. 
Because my Star IC2440 was so inexpensive 
and no other printer comes close for sheer quality and 
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Dynamic 



CP/M has the advantage over Amsdos in that you can have 
several random access files open at any one time. Alex Aird 
compares two databases that sit on opposite sides of the fence 




i 



FOR AMSTRAD CPC 61 . 

(Also tefnJTd l?SK LTC H 0 ! ■.- J 


ATI,AST PLUS 


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MASTERFILE 


BATA H[fSC AND KhTRIFlMI 
HO.Ml- ,l.d HIJS! NESS 


Campbell Systems 


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mw 

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21 Oct fi4 

£235.00 

£33.00 

£3)5,00 

£133.00 

02 Oct 34 

02 Oct 34 

reminder sent 3.1.95 

Top record = 6001 IH] for Menu ( INTER1 for wore,.. 

File; FILE 3 

Rtpord&;D0L7 Selected ;0012 Parent 

i:3005 RAM used;S2K from 84k 


Masterfife til menu by men u approach 


R ANDOM access files with indexes mean 
that m sorting is needed, Data is stored 
in the order that ft is entered, and the 
index keeps track of where things are on 
the disc, So If you want lists of dub members by 
name and membership number, you could keep 
one index for names and one for membership 
numbers. This would be the same as having two 
separate sorted lists. 

AtLast Pius makes full use of the CP/M random 
access facility by keeping both data and index 
files open at the same lime and finding items of 
data by referring to the index or indexes. 

You can liken this to you going to the local 
library for information on, say r Basic program¬ 
ming. First you could consult a map to find the 
nearest library, then look through a card index of 
subjects to find the shelf where computing books 
were stored, then look along the shelves for 
books on Basic programming, then consult the 
book's index pages. 

AtLast Plus works in a similar fashion, allowing 
a maximum of five indexes per file, and 10 files 
per database, 

Masterffh If I for the 6128 has become the 
standard by which to judge other databases, 
it runs under Amsdos and all the data is 
stored in memory. No disc access makes the 
program very quick to use. 


Putting it to work 


AtLast Plus can be used for storing most kinds of 
data, but is limited when it comes to calculations. 
For example, if you wanted to keep cricket club 
records you could record the subs paid by each 
member and the program would give you a total 
amount of subs paid by all members, or each 
group of members. Likewise you could get the 
total number of runs scored by each batsman, 

The limitation is that you wouldn't be able to 
calculate batting averages. How severe that limi¬ 
tation is depends upon the use you have for a 
database. 

I set up a genealogical database to test out the 
program and found it very easy to get started. 
First you define the fields - AtLast Plus only 
allows 20. You might think that you would soon 
run out of fields, but this is not the case because 
each field may have up to 99 elements - a field to 
record the names of someone's children could 
have, say, ID elements and the program would 
automatically refer to each element as childrenl, 
children and so on. 


Page 30 


Amstred User October 1988 


<r 
















































REVIEW 

ra 

V 

/ 


7 


Starting out from scratch can he a tittle 
daunting with Masterfile III but the progress¬ 
ive menu by menu approach is helpful to a 
certain extent Initial record designs, 
however, can be a little tricky. There is scope 
here for someone to release a disc foil of 
ready made formats* 

First you must specify data names, then use 
these names when setting up the format 
There is no need to specify the length of a 
field as Masterfile ill uses variable length 
fields „ This means no space is wasted with 
short or empty fields . 

Fields, forms and indexes 

Fields can be of various types in AtLast Plus. 
Alpha is for names and suchlike. Upper converts 
all input to upper case. There are three types of 
numeric fields, Integer. Fixed point decimal and 
Real. The Date field is intelligent and won't 
permit, for instance, 31st February. 

A Serial field is automatically incremented and 
is used for unique reference numbers. The HMS 
field keeps data in the form of hours minutes and 
seconds. The Constant field type is for storing 
data which is often repeated, like names of towns 
- you only have to type the first letter or two of a 
name., the program will fill in the rest. In all, nine 
different types of fields are supported. 

After the field definitions are done ft is time to 
set up the indexes you intend to use. For my 
genealogical database I used indexes for 
reference number and date of birth. 

The program creates a form for you to display 
all details on the screen so there is no compli¬ 
cated design process to go through. The form can 
be edited to suit your own tastes, or even 
completely redone. It is possible to have several 
different forms to allow you to display the data in 
several different ways. 

If you use a unique number for each record it 
makes the search for information very easy. 
Using the genealogical example you would see 
one record, and its parents and children could be 
listed along with a reference number. To find a 
certain child's details it is simply a matter of 
pressing S to search and the number to find. 
One of the more powerful options of AtLast 


Plus is List You can list records either to screen, 
disc or printer in a specific order. In my genea¬ 
logical database I used the Royal Family and 
listed records using the date of birth index and a 
condition that the title field began with a letter K, 
This enabled me to list all the kings of England in 
the correct order. 

Layout is very flexible In Masterfile III and 
several form designs can be used for the 
same data. Little boxes can be drawn around 
pieces of data and colour can be used , doth 
can serve to highlight important items. 

Each format fe divided into Heading area 
and Record areas, in a cricket club records 
example , a member's name , address, 
membership number and so on would be 
placed in the heading area, and scores would 
appear in the record area. Several scores 
could be displayed at once and a highlight bar 
can be used when searching through the 
records. 

New records can be added at any time, 
although it is advisable to sort the file after 
each session. The sorting speeds up the dis¬ 
play of the data considerably. 

The relational abilities of Masterfile ill are 
very useful, The name address and 
membership number would be the parent 
record, scores would be the child records. 
The membership number would be used as a 
link between both. 

A separate format could be used for 
address labels . All that is needed is to have a 
form that contains only name and address 
and is eight lines deep . The priming of labels 
is a very easy fftfog to do and switching 
between forms is accomplished at the touch 
of a key. 

Conditions 

AtLast Plus has many applications such as print¬ 
ing address labels to all people having a certain 
post code or finding all people in the database 
within a certain age group, or a combination of 
both. A great many conditions can be used to 
filter the records., enabling you to extract just the 
information you need. 

You can have up to 10 files in each database, so 


fie Id Selection Conditlaft 

Lineegel 2] EC H 

frene C, l g g i C* I Sat aria as- 
T hc British Scyjii FaiL 5 y 


Naftt r Gabrf* 

Title i kir.f Gtorfc V 

Reign fron t ;gi» To i 893*6 
Batft I 1BB5 Died ; i536 

SpctJKPE htane ; Princess Hairy of Teck 
WethfriS : 

F-ittwr* wee* ? 

Children b Edvard VIEl 

freorgu V| 

Maty Ffineess Ray*I 
Henry put* of G1ouaeiter 
George Dvfee ef Kent 
John -S ft 


Ref nun j 12 
Lineage ; n 


ia 


Reieren-se Number 
13 


26 


34 


Mis-aligned 
output bom 
AtLgtf Plus 


if you want to record a great amount of detail 
about a single person you car create a second 
file. This could have a reference number and one 
other field of, say, 15 elements. Each element 
could have 79 characters. This corresponds to 
around a screenful, and by remembering the 
reference number all you have to do is switch 
files and search again by number, The process is 
quick, easy and the only limitation is disc size. 

The printing of address labels with Mas¬ 
terfile Hi can be made very selective, if you 
have a field for the amount of subs paid you 
would select records on the basis o f the subs 
paid field being empty , Then it would be just 
a matter of loading a roil of labels into the 
printer and pressing P, 

Sorting data on surname can present a 
problem with some databases . For example J 
Smith would be sorted into the Js and Mr J 
Smith would be appear among the Ms. Mas¬ 
terfile fit gets around this problem by 
allowing you to enter the data as MrJ\Smith. 
The backslash tells Masterfile to sort into 
order as if the data had been entered as Smith 
MrJ. 

Making changes 

Databases created with the earlier version of 
AtLast are not directly compatible. All is not lost 
though because you can export data from the 
earlier version to a disc file then import the data 
into AtLast Plus. You car also create indexes to 
go with this file. The process works with any plain 
Ascii file so you can import data from a variety of 
sources. 

Pressing T from the main menu in Mas¬ 
terfile III - a hangover from the early tape 
version - takes you to the disc menu. Apart 
from the usual save and load you can merge 
data from other files. Either the whole fife can 
be merged or just a select few records. 
Formats , too, can to? merged into the current 
database file. There is no real need to leave 
the Masterfile III environment as all the 
necessary disc management functions are 
provided. 

Data can be exported , buf not imported, 
from Masterfile HI, meaning it can be used for 
jobs like mail merging. The data can be 
exported in various formats so as to be suit¬ 
able for a variety of mail merge type pro¬ 
grams, or ft can be sent in a suitable form to 
be used in a Basic program. 

Printing it out 

There were problems in AtLast Plus with out¬ 
putting data to the printer. I had name and 
reference number neatly aligned on screen but 
was unable to get them aligned properly on the 
printer - see Children in the printout alongside. 
Also, when I wanted each record on a single page 
the two line heading was printed on one page 
and the record on another. 

Printer control codes need to be sent to the 



Amstrad User October 1988 


Page 3 * 



























printer before booting the program. It's not a 
difficult procedure to do from either Basic or 
CP/M, but it would! have been nice to have been 
able to do it without leaving the program. 


Mas fertile III allows you to send raw codes 
to whatever printer you have fitted to your 
CPC. Condensed enlarged NLQ ... ail are 
easily set up by referring to your printers 
manual for the correct codes. Hard copies are 
printed with data in the positions you see 
them on screen , No problems. 


Ri 

■VIEW 

— 

w 

_ 7 



Conclusions 


If calculations are important then Masterfile III is 
the one to go for as AtLast Plus is very limited in 
this area. 

If you are into genealogy then AtLast Plus is 
perfect and you will find that file size limited only 
by disc space is a real help. 

Then again, because Masterfile III runs under 
Amgdos and the whole of the file is kept in 
memory, it is exceedingly fast. AtLast Plus suffers 
from CRMs inherent slowness at accessing disc 
drives. 

Both have good manuals that feature excellent 


tutorial and advanced sections. The Masterfile III 
manual has no index, which is a prty r but the 
detailed contents pages help you find things 
fairly easily. The AtLast Plus manual was written 
by David Foster 

The major advantage of AtLast Plus is the fact 
: that it runs under CP/M PJus. This makes the fiIes 
extremely portable. AtLast Plus can import data 
from a plain Ascii file, making upgrading from a 
variety of other databases a definite possibility. 

The provision of User Basic in Masterfile III 
allows experienced programmers to set up the 
machine and manipulate data in any way they 
choose, Beginners are not forgotten though as 
some of the Basic programs supplied in the 
manual need no alteration, 

These two databases are really very good. I 
would recommend both .,. it all boils down to 
what sort of data you want to store. 


The AtLast Pius database runs under CP/M+ 
on the 6128 and costs €39,95 on disc, if is 
available from Rationai Solutions, Cam 
House, Can worthy Water, Cornwall, Pit 5 
SUB. (Tei: 056-681 511). 

Masterfile III runs under Amsdos on the 6128 
and costs £39.95 on disc. It is available from 
Campbell Systems r 7 Station Road, Epping , 
Essex, CM16 AHA. (Tei: 0378 77762). 


How they rate 

AtLast Plus 

Masterfile Ilf 

Flexible layout 

• 

* 

Calculations 


• 

Unlimited file size 

• 


Change layout 

• 

• 

Fast sorting 

• 

• 

Fast search mg 

• 

• 

Conditional opergtofs 

• 

• 

Set up printer from program 


• 

File protection 

• 


Export data 

• 

* 

Import data 

• 


Idiot proof manual 

• 

• 



d vantag e 


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Return To Arg 

3 AMUSEMENTS 5 DIVERSIONS - 29 games whidn run cr 
CP:M Mallard BASIC. Stadrak, Whrdnward, Lander, 30 Tic- 
Tac-To, Merchant, Olhellc, Hangman, BswubsJI, Givi War, 
American Fexjr&all.M&ie, NimHOfieFfeices, Blackjack, Spies. 
Grazy-0. 


Page 32 


.4 ms trad User October ? 988 



















































































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from M.J.C. SUPPLIES 


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Amstrad User October 1983 


Page 33 










































































































































































EE A JURE 


L _ I 



T HE Salamander coin-op machine has been 
drawing the crowds in the arcades since 
its first appearance. In essence it is a 
beefed up Nemesis, a sc roily shoot 'em up 
with a host of additional weapons. One of the 
main attractions is that Salamander is a two 
player game. Two friends can pilot ships 
through the alien territory together. Unfor¬ 
tunately this has been dropped from the home 
computer versions. 

The arcade machine has megabytes of 
memory and a 32 bit 68000 processor - you can't 
really expect a 64k, 8 bit, Z80 machine to be able 
to mimic that. Still, the CPC version does a pretty 
good job. 

Andrew Glaf&ter was the archetype whizz kid 
programmer of a few years back. Mow 21, he 
lives in Crawley, Surrey with his mother and a cat 
called Bill. 'There used to be a Ben", 
he says, "but he got into one cat 
*ight too many. Bill is a clever 
cat, he'll nip out to the hall 
when the phone rings so 
he can sit on your lap 
as you take the call". 
Andrew's first computer 
only had eight switches, 
he designed and built it 
himself. "It had 31 bytes of 
ram, and I never filled it up." 
From there he progressed to a 
computer built from a kit, that had a 
hexadecimal keypad, but the first machine 
he had which anyone would really recognise 
was a ZX81. He wrote a few games for this, 
including Invaders and Meteor. Then when the 
Spectrum was announced he decided that it 
would be his next machine. 

Unfortunately there were long delays in Spec¬ 
trum deliveries. Andrew spent the months 
writing a Defender type game on paper. He 
called it Orb iter. When the black beastie 
turned up, Andrew keyed the hex in and 
stole a march on the programmers who 
only started when the computer arrived. 
But there were problems with working like this, 
didn't know how to produce sound from 
machine code, so every time you shoot an alien 
the program jumps into Basic, does a BEEP and 
returns", he admits. 

Qrbiter was sold by Silversoft and was a huge 


Slippery 

character 


Salamander is the latest program from 
Andrew John Glaister. He spoke 
to Simon Rockman about his life 
and programming projects 


Page 34 


4 mstrsd User October 1988 















I 


FFA TURF 


7 


$ 


i 


success. Perhaps this shows the roots of Sala¬ 
mander. 

There were other games in between, of course, 
mainly on the Spectrum. Andrew wrote the first 
two sections of The Fourth Protocol: JJ lt had 
some great windowing routines - 1 may well use 
them again",. Empire for Firebird - "They might 
release it on the Amstrad one day-they keep on 
threatening to put it out on Silver" - and Comet, 
of which he says: "It was either a couple of 
months late or 75 years too early". 

As I doubt that the CPC will be around then, I 
think they missed the boat, He has a number of 
other programming projects to his credit. If you 
have an RAC card it will have been printed by 
Andrew's program, 

The game 

Salamander is a Konami game, and Andrew has 
worked for Konami before - he converted 
Jailbreak to the Spectrum. Salam may be Arabic 
for Peace but Salamander is nothing like 
peaceful. It r s named after the reptile owned by 
such dignitaries as Labour's Red Ken. 

The first attack wave consists of strings of 
aliens, They don't fire at you, but you have to kill 
whole formations if you want to pick up bonus 
weapons. See the weapons chart for details, 

Then you start to encounter the planet. It's one 
of those places which has land both above and 



Andrew Qaister - a professional programmer 


below you. Nasty creepy crawlies run along the 
surface, the missiles come in extra useful for zap¬ 
ping them, Large arms grope at you. With some 
heavy cannon fire they can be made to disin¬ 
tegrate - but it r s not the last you'll see of them. 

Next comas a wave of horns, These puncture 
the air and look like whale bones, Timing is very 
important here, make sure you dodge them since 
you won't get an opportunity to top up on special 
weapons for a while, In a minute a standard ship 

► 


Speed up 

This makes your spaceship move faster. In 
the arcade version the difference is slight, you 
have five levels of speed up and really need to 
get alt five for it to be worthwhile. On the 
Amstrad there are only two speeds, and the 
difference is quite marked. To have all five 
levels would mean that the standard game 
would be too slaw to be playable. 

Multiple 

The best feature of Nemesis was the game's 
ability to add an extra ship which was towed 
be hind your main ship. Salamander goes one 
better. You can pick up two extra orb-like 
craft. Each shares your weapons specification 
hut cannot be destroyed unless the main craft 
is hit. They multiply your firepower, making 
the game a good deal easier. 

Missiles 

You can swoop down and attack the ground* 
hased enemy, but this is likely to end in tears. 
Much better to send a missile down to do the 
dirty work for you. They hug the ground and 
will take out any nasties they meet. 

User 

Your standard bullet will only kill the first 
enemy it encounters, The laser slices through 
whole formations. It's an awesome weapon, 
particularly when allied with multiple ships. 
The laser looks like the weapon in Defender. It 
is best to fan the multiples out when using it. 

Bonus 

This isn't a feature of the arcade game and 
replaces ripple lasers. The game is too easy 
with ripple lasers and to make it more difficult 
would render a standard craft impotent. 

In the arcade you can put more money in to 
get extra lives, with a maximum of 52, It 
would be a little unfair to expect you to nip 
down to the shops to pay for extra lives in 
mid-game. 

It would also be cheating the Hairy Hacker if 
you started the Amstrad version with more 
that a reasonable number of lives, The bonus 
simply gives you an extra life. 

ftomjs weapons chart 



A wtfve of horns purtefuxe the air anti too * 1 like whaie bones 



Amstrad User October !983 


Page 35 















































EXCLUSIVE 


READER 
OFF E R 


AMGRAPH* 

Am graph allows you to ente* tables of 
figures and present them in a neat, 
graphical form in addition to pie and bar 
graphs, this program offers stacked and 
3D bar graphs, all with automatic scaling 
and an Epson compatible printout facility. 
November 1985. 

SORCERY PLUS HACK* 

A suite of programs that makes playing 
Sorcery Plus easier and more fun. You can 
easily adapt the sprites to your own 
design, and increase your survival 
chances. January 1986. 

HQMESPREAD 

A simple but flexible spreadsheet program 
you can use without having to learn all the 
complicated commands of a big 
spreadsheet, yet still perform some 
startling and sophisticated operations. 

DIARY 

A disc-only program that demonstrates 
how to simulate random access files 
under Amsdos without resorting to 
machine code. Diary is a useful program 
for making sure you don't book a table at 
the local sushi bar when you'll miss 
EastEnders, 

MODE 3* 

Mode 3 is a two-semen, four colour, Modr? 
0 thai lets you have d^ta on the 
background screen which you can't sec. 
but which is nevertheless there. Very fast 
animation can be created by flipping 
instantly from the foreground to the 
background screen. January 1986. 

ANIMATOR* 

Animator is a wire frame drawing suite of 
programs that allows you to put together 
a number of key frames, and the software 
will 'tween' them to produce a finished 
cartoon April 1986. 

TRACE* 

Tha TRON and TFOFF commands are very 
useful for debugging basic programs, but 
they often make a mess of the screen. 

This routine allows you to re-direct the 
trace to a screen window or printer 
December 1985. 

CHORD FINDER* 

Tins program can display over 2,000 
chords, and up to 36 chord shapes can be 
saved to tape or disc and loaded when 
required, September 1985. 

JET SET WILLY HACK* 

Infinite lives and a magic teleport help you 
trip around miner Willy's mansion. Note 


unun 



We have brought together 
the very best non-games programs 
culled from the issues of Amstrad Computer User. 


These clever programs cover animation, business, music, 
games hacks and much more. Whatever your interest, there 
is something here for you - and at a very special price. 



that this hack will only work with The Final 
Frontier version and not with the versions 
of the gsme that aepeared on a 
compilation. September 1985. 

DOUBLE HEIGHT PRINT* 

A useful routine for enlarging letters on 
the screen. So if you are a tall type, than 
letters help you to expand your horizons. 
September 1985. 

ELITE DISC HACK 

So you have been playing Elite for a while 
and are still mostly harmless. If you want 
millions of credits, a few bolt-on goodies 
or even the hallowed Elite status, then 
ZZKJ's program can provide it. Instantly. 

JUSTIN S SCROLL* 

If you look in wonder at arcade games in 
which spaceships whiz? over a planet's 
surface he one million miles per hour and 
wish that you could write a program to do 
that, then you need Justin's Scroll Peter 
Gretm adapted this program for the 
scrolling in Rim runner, and the Zeit 
Corporation found it came in useful for 
F5MX Kfdz. This is how the professionals 
do it- June 1987. 

RSX LISTER 

Most utility roms contain an RSX lister, 
but they only list those FSXs that are in 
rum. What about those that have been 
soft loaded? With this routine you can 
reveal alt the RSXs bidden in your ram. 


lb some cas&s you will need to refer 
to the issue of ACU in which the 
programs appeared. In the list shove 
these are shown by # followed by 
the month. If you do not have these 
issues, you can send for the Utilities 
Unlimited documentation pack at the 
special price of £4.95. 



PRINTER SPOOLER 

When you print out a file from disc Arnold 
spends all his time printing. With a posh 
computer, like the PC, this kind of job can 
be done in the background enabling you 
to carry on using the computer while the 
printer is working. With Printer Spooler 
your humble CPC can do the very same 
thing. It's Just like having two computers. 

EPSON DUMP 

A dump for Epson compatible printers, 
ideal for taking hard copies of Mode 1 or 
Mode 2 screens, or parte thereof. Works 
with the DMP20W, DMP2160, or any other 
similar printer, but not with the DM Pi. 

THE NOBLE ORGAN 

Turn your computer into a different kind 
of keyboard - a musical one. OK the CPC 
is no FaiFlight, but the AY-8-912 can sound 
pretty impressive if you have light enough 
fitigftrs, 

ZX LOADER* 

A routine, tihai will allow you to read in 
Spectrum binary fifes. This will Not let you 
pfay Spectrum games on your CPC, but it 
is ideal for transferring data and graphics 
between two otherwise incompatible 
Computers. July 1986. 


Tape £ 7.95 

Disc £ 9,95 

Documentation £4,95 


To order please use 
the order form on 



Page 36 


Amstrad User October 1988 





































FEA JURE 




is gonna look mighty puny. 

But that was the easy bit. Later comes a fusil- 
fade of missiles from surface-based cannon, all 
looking more bio logical! than mechanical. Once 
again it is the surface-hugging missiles which 
cause the necessary wipeout. 

In front of you is a solid wall. A quick blast 
reveals that it is not quite so solid, a sort of soft 
spongy rock. Oh r watch out, those arms are back. 
Fly between and shoot your way through the 
blancmange. But the rock grows behind you, 
keep moving and firing in a straight line. 

Then it's into an area of calm, Agh! What's 
that? The lump to the right is turning into a brain. 
You need to shoot it in the eye while you dodge 
the arm. An arm which was particularly difficult 
to program. If you destroy the brain your ship 
rotates and the game turns into a vertically 
scrolling shoot 'em up, 

Major project 

When he has recovered from the shock of writing 
Salamander Andrew will return to his major 
project This Is an assembler, monitor and editing 
package called PD$ {Programmers Development 
System!. PDS is the professional programmers 


assembler. It runs on an Apricot or IBM-type PC 
but produces programs for 6502 and Z9&-based 
computers. 

Andrew started writing PCS for his own use - 
There just weren't any commercial assemblers 
which were good enough" - but soon realised 
that he had a saleable product. He enlisted the 
help of Fouad Katan,. a programmer he had first 
worked with at Silversoft. 

PD5 is continuing to grow. Soon there will be a 
communications module which will allow pro¬ 
grammers who work apart to send programs and 
source code over the telephone at very high 
speeds. That will be followed by a 68000 
assembler which will enable programmers who 
buy the system to write programs for the Atari ST 
and Commodore Amiga. There will also be a ver¬ 
sion of PDS to run on the Atari ST. 

The system has caused something of a stir 
among the programming community. The 
greatest fans of the system are Realtime, who 
take every opportunity to tell other programmers 
how much time it has saved them, 

Andrew wrote Salamander using PDS, and it is 
because he is a professional programmer that he 
knows what other professional programmers 
want: 

"The most important thing is speed. When you 


are deeply into a project like Salamander you 
don't want to wa it h alf a n hour f or the prog ra m to 
assemble and link, Using PDS you can go from 
changing an op-code to having a Salamander 
running inside a CPC in less than four seconds. 

iJ lt has all the things which games pro¬ 
grammers really want. Timing is important 
When you have a lot of sprites to move you must 
take care to miss the screen refresh. This hap¬ 
pens every 50th of a second, so loops must take 
less than this. PDS will automatically measure 
how long a routine will take to run”. 

PDS is to a programmer what a word processor 
is to a journalist but It's not cheap. The software 
starts at £500, you need an interface for each of 
the computers you want to program at £50 a 
piece, and a twin drive PC at the very least, fouad 
and Andrew recommend a hard disc, but then' 
they have been spoiled by using a Compaq 386 - 
the most powerful PC around. With this system to 
help him develop games like Salamander, it 
won't be long before you hear of Andrew Clatter 
again. 

Author Andrew Qatster for Kcnami 

Price: f8.95 tape, F14.9S disc 



Unbeatable value 

CPC464 

CPC664 

CPC6128 


MONEY MANAGER 

SAVE £5 on RRP of £29.95 when you order direct from Connect Systems 

ONLY £24.95 

Irtcl. VAT, PiP 


Unrivalled features 
Money Manager Plus 
for PCW 8256, 8512, 
9512, PCI 512,1640, 

PPC 

£ 39.95 

Inc, VAT, PiP 


Financial management software for personal and/or small business use 

Money Mariager is an easy-to-use system (or recording al l lina nriaf transactions. and f or a nalysing them in a number ol very powg rtul ways in orde r to tad litate sound 
tinancial management !l is ideal for controlling the finances ol a small business, or lor users wishing to control their personal II nances in a business-like way. Use il to 
check bank statements, keep track of exp mditure. monitor cash flow, make budgeting lorecasts, prepare business linanaal statements, pacify your bank manager, 
convince the tax and VAT inspectors, avoid nasty surprises, elc etc.! 


1 2 months of entri as are kepi in a file stored on yourdise. At any time, you may load atileinto |he computer memory, addto or edit tbs entries, analyse them, prim statements, 
and then save the updated file for later use. E ntries may be historic (tor record keeping) ortorecast (lor budgel ing). You may have any number ol separate liles, and make 
copies of fifes lor archive purposes. You may advance the period covered by a file month by month. 


----—-“- 1 

Up lo 10-0 separate transactions may be omened per month. Each 

entry consists oh 

• The day of the month, e.g. 23rd of June. 

• An account number, one of up to 9 delined by you to suit your 
circumstances eg. 1-Barclays, 2= Visa, 3=Halila* etc, 

• Reference, e.g ABC123 tor a cheque number or invoice reference. 

• A class code, one of uplo 50 delined by you to suit your 
circumstances e.g, h0=Household expenses. h 1 •Mo-iig age, 
h2=Rates or po-Production, pi =Raw materials. p£-Assembly, 
p3=Packing. etc. 

il A description so thaf you can see what each transaction was lor, 
e.g.Tfew gearbox” or *Boxot 10 discs.' 

• An optional single character mark which you may include lor 
turtherclassification, e.g. b=business,p-private, etc 

• The amount ot the transaction, which may be plus or minus, 

• A marker to indicate whetherthe entry is exempt, iero rated or 
taxable lor VAT , or alternatively the actu al VAT paid. 


-. 

You may select categories according to account, class and mark (e.g. 

all entries, or ail motoring expenses Tor business using a credit card, 

etc.) and produce reports on the screen or printer as fellows: 

• Full detailed statements, showing each transaction tor any month 
orlorthewhote year. 

• Detailed monthly VAT statement showing input and output 
amounts excluding VAT, (tie actual VAT and the total amount, plus 
totals and net VAT due. 

• Tables showing the totals in each Class for each month Of the year. 

• Tables showing the totals in each class for each account 

• Tables showing monthly maximum, minimum, average balances, 
turnover, cashflow etc. 

• Bar graphs of any category month by month. 

• Pie charts ot annual totals for various categories (CPC version 
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Plui: landing ordarnmirl** oplfonally awlaU ini* daia atdw-ilftm afcsrch : 
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Send cheque or credit card number or phone for immediate despatch 

Connect Systems 

3 Flanchford Road, London W12 9ND, 01-743 9792 8am-10pm 7 days a week 



VIM 


Amstrad User October 1983 


Page 37 
































WE'VE GOT 

1,000!! 

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2-4 OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER Ml 5QA 



Page 38 


Amstmrf User October 1988 






























































HACKING 


z 


— 



8HT1 


B EFORE I start; No, Suz has not had her 
baby yet. It's a week overdue, hence no 
Vax, I promise if any news comes in 
while I am putting Hairy Hackers 
together, I will tell you. 

OK. If you've bought a 6128 lately you'll have 
got some free discs with it. Adam Todd has 
picked u p on th i s fact a nd se nt u s so me pokes f o r 
the games- on said discs. Off we go then with 
infinite lives for Ocean's underground arcade 
adventure, Nomad. Watch how you go with this 
one, it isn't diecksummed. The hex adds up to 
2321. And don't forget to put the game disc in the 
drive before running the poke. 


CURTAIN 

CALL 

Lance Davis gives a repeat performance 
of his well known Vax impression 



*° minting n 

■ takes "'**««*« fcftfe 


1 ' 

NQkAD (fisc 


l 

x 

Infinite lives by Adi* To^d 


J 

10 

mm l.203F:a=£F5 


20 

HEAD b(:If bS=‘end-THEN 40 


30 

POKE i,VAin'+bl);i*s+T:bOTO 

20 

40 

LOAD'non Loac 1 ,62040 


50 

CALL SFt 


40 

DATA af,52,3a,22,1:3,de,3a,21 

,f5,»0 

70 

DATA 22,7*1,20,2 1 ,40,20,11,40 

,00,11 

S3 

DATA b3,00,td,bl,(3,40,00 



Doors of Doom is a survivor from the earliest 
days of Artisoft, It's a fast and confusing multi' 
level arcade adventure that somehow still man¬ 
ages to remain playable. Adam's poke will stop 
you losing energy when you fire your gun and 
gives you extra energy when you pick up a cup, 
Ty pe the poke in, save it to a bfa nk disc, ru n it to 
check for typing errors, reset your machine, load 
the poke, put the game disc in the drive, run the 
poke. 


t ' doors Of 000* disc 

2 ' Energy by Adair Tpdd 

3 ' 

10 mm S?B3F:tet=0 

20 m b=450M to 

50 READ a$;c=VAL(Tnl) 

40 PDKf b/C:tol-tot+CiMEXT 

50 IF tdtO&M 1 ? THEN PHINfError";StO* 

6t LOAr^crsofd r ,fi204# 

70 CALL 65000 

80 DATA 11,ZMftrifH,ffi,ZI,2Vd,5l 
90 DATA 01 ,0t,0*,ed,M,21,40,20,1 1,40 
100 DATA N,fll,f5,24,td,H,c3,H,II,if 
110 DATA 3£,70,tr,3e,36,32,dl p B£fC3,99 
m DATA 7c 


We will come back to the rest of Adam's pokes 
after Peter Charles has had his say. Peter has sent 
in some tips for three Code Masters games. The 
first is for Super Stunt Man, the game of the 
making of the film of the stunt See the photo, 
Next up is a rather helpful lip for the Oliver 
twins' first game for Code Masters, super Robin 
Hood. While in the game press 6, A and P 
together and then either E for infinite energy, H 
for all the hearts or L for all the lifts to be acti¬ 
vated. 

finally, to complete the Peter's tiplet triplet, a 
little cheat for that great racing car game. Grand 
Prix Simulator. See the other photo, 

Peter wants a fiver and help getting to level 2 In 
Short Circuit. Can't help you there on either 
score, but I'll send you something nice real soon. 
Start watching your doormat 
Right. Back to Adam Todd's pokes for (he 6128 
giveaway games or disc. Here we go with infinite 
lives for that swinging game. Hunchback, and its 
sequel Hunchfront. Don't alter the the line num¬ 
bers in the first poke, you can leave the credit 
re ms out 

You know the drill by now. Yes you do, Sigh, 
All right then; Type the poke in, save it to a blank 


► 


Amstrad User October 1938 


Page 39 
































MASTERFILE III 


FOR THE AMSTRAD CPC 6128 (ALSO CPC 464/664 WITH DK TRONICS 64K RAM) 


FIRMLY ESTABLISHED... 

MASTERFILE III is now firmly established as 
THE filing system for the CPC6128. It has received 
rapturous reviews and we could paper the walls of 
our new offices with our customers' letters of 
appreciation. 

For the benefit of newcomers to the CPC machines: 
MASTERFILE III is a powerful and flexible data 
filing and retrieval system. All "database” systems 
require that your data is organised into fields and 
records. Unlike most, MASTERFILE does not 
commit you to field lengths or formats, since ALL 
data is van able-length and optional. Files are not 
pre-formattedj and only used bytes are saved to 
disc. Also, unlike the rest, MASTERFILE allows 
multiple user-defined ways of viewing/printing 
your data. And unique in its price range, MASTER- 
FILE offers RELATIONAL FILE options, where¬ 
by common data can be entered just once and 
shared by many records, Maximum field size is 
240, maximum fields per record is over 50, and 
maximum file size is 64K. Room for 1,000 full 
names and addresses, for example. Only one disc 
drive is required. It is menu-driven throughout, and 
comes with detailed illustrated manual, and exam¬ 
ple files, 

SO VERY VERSATILE... 

Just about ANY kind of information can be 
handled by MASTERFILE. You can EXPORT the 
data to other systems (e.g. PROTEXT/MERGE and 
TASWORD). You can even merge your own USER 
BASIC to MASTERFILE for customised file 
processing, or build new files from other computer 
sources. The speed of SEARCH of MASTERFILE 
is second to none, Records can be sorted ascending/ 
descending, character or signed numeric, even 
embedded keys such as surnames. Other functions 
are field-to-field calculations, and several-across 
label printing. We simply don't have room to list all 
the features; give us a call if you are still in doubt 
of the power of MASTERFILE III. 



Of tub IIif-1'. A,lit. 


llod? 


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Ajiru printer yicy Nco) 

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Mire piyii- c Uf 
Ihi-uirring *+:hirr 


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Ceffff HitrT 
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It: 


41K 


ALL THIS POWER 

This is no toy thrown together in BASIC and half- 
tested, but real machine-coded computing power 
professionally constructed. We have had IBM and 
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machines — when they had seen the earlier CPC 
MASTERFILE. All this power is yours for 
£39.95. 

For those who already have an earlier MASTER- 
FILE, we offer updates; please telephone for 
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**+ PCW users: be patient, MASTERFILE 8000 
will be ready early in 1987 *** 


MASTERCALC 128 SPREADSHEET 

We also have one of the fastest and friendliest 
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128. Its special features include: individual tailor¬ 
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1 


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Prices include VAT and P&P to anywhere in 
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service, ACCESS/VISA/MASTERCARD welcome, 
written or telephoned, quoting card expiry date. 
Make cheques payable to “Campbell Systems”. 
Our normal response is return of post, 1st class, 

CAMPBELL SYSTEMS Dept. (ACU) 

7 Station Road, EPPING, Essex CM16 4HA, 
England. Tel: (0378) 77762/3. 















































HA CKING 


L— _._ / 


disc, run it to check for typing errors, reset your 
machine, load the poke, put the game disc in the 
drive, run the poke. 


t ' HUNCHBACK I disc 

2 ' Infinite L 1 ves by Ac an Todc 

3 ' 

4 CRAIN P'ERGE 'hUoadeO 
375 Pm 3S1TM 


1 ' HUNCHBACK It disc 

2 ’ Infinite lives ay Man Tods 

3 ' 

10 MEMORY S*76F 

20 LQAD'hunGfiscn.Sfl s’, 64000; CALL 64000 
30 LOAD , codf , ,it770 
40 POKE *S4F6,0;PQKE 68880,6C9 
50 CALL l&m 


Adam's last poke is for that smashing 
schoolboy romp,. Tubaruba. You wanna Ferrari? 
So do I, The following will give you infinite wot- 
sits, infinite oojahs and rid your enemy of bis 
doobries. Or something like that. 


1 ' TUBARUBA nisc 

2 Infinite energy, lives and er.eny 

3 hss no huLlets * by Adan Tods. 

4 

10 mm &20FF:tct=B 

20 for & z flsF 0 E to mn 

30 HEAD aitt=VAL(T+a)J 

40 POKE h / c:tot=tot+c;NEl(T 

50 1F tot<>acS9 THEN PRIKT'Error':STOP 

60 LOAD'gia^,62100 

70 CALL SBF17 

30 DAT A 21,dU8,3e,c3,32,08,4a,22,0f 
90 DATA 6a,c6,06,3Z,4a,79,af,32,38,71 
102 DATA c3,20,63,21,00,bf,22,0c,21,21 
112 DATA 08,21,11,*0,01,01,00,7f,ed,b@ 
122 DATA ej,00,01 


Justin's meagre contribution this month - busy 
lad, Justin - is an infinite lives poke for the tape 
version of Elite's new bouncy ball game, Hopping 
Mad Not sure if it wifi work with the disc version, 
Probably not. 


T ' 

Infinite Lives for 



2 ' 

Elite's Hopping Had tape 



! 3 ' 
£ " 

[$31988 Justin fgr ACU 



10 

NODE 1 cOPENOUT TjHEIWSY 

1234 


20 

tOt-0 



30 

FOR n=£§0 TO £&F 



40 

REAP at:s=VAUT+sl) 



50 

POKE n,act 



60 

NEXT n 



70 

IF tot<> 1 433 THEN PKIHTTftiooops, 

th 


e r e's an error in tie data, 1 ; END 


80 

PRI'iTinsert reno-ifid Hopping Wad 

ta 


pe' 



90 

LOAD 'elite'’;CALL SS0 



100 

DATA 21,89,00,22,d0,0f, 

c3,a0 


110 

DATA flf,af,32,55,43,c3, 

00,40 


120 

DATA 4a,55,53,54,49,4e 




Talking of Justin, it was he who provided ns 
with an infinite lives poke for another Elite game, 
Ikari Warriors, way back in ... way back in well, 
it was a long time ago. 

Obviously not satisfied with immortality, John 
Gimber has come up with something that turns 
the grenades in this game into — and I quote - 
stunningly destructive but very picturesque 
flame throwers. End of quote, start of poke: 


1 1 

IKARI UAftRlOIIS disc 


2 1 
\ 1 

FLame throwers by John 

Gtuber 

100 

MOPE 0 


110 

MEMORY 4799 


120 

FOR i-0 TO 15:READ a:I 

NK. i,3:NEXT 

130 

LQA&'Screen-bin' 


140 

LOAD'ylrriors' 


150 

POKE 26900,2 


160 

POKE 2-6901,8 


170 

POKE 26902,2 


180 

POKE 27546,8 


190 

POKE 27547,3 


200 

POKE 27548,2 


210 

POKE 27426,2 


220 

POKE 27427,0 


230 

POKE 27428,2 


240 

[AIL 65488 


250 

DATA 13,6,3,15,16,0,1, 

2,14 

260 

DATA 26,24/9,12,21,22, 

19 



Nomad by Ocean 


Finally, Niall Brady has sent me a memory ■ 
editor. For those who aren't sure what one of 
those is, a memory editor is a nifty little utility 
that lets you look directly at any part of ram 
and overwrite what you find there by typing 
hex numbers or Ascii characters at the key¬ 
board. 

lt J s not the perfect hacking aid by any 
means, but it sure comes in handy now and 
then for messing about. 

Mi all's program sets up a bar command, 

I E. This takes a parameter-the first address 
you want to look at - so the syntax, if you 
wanted to look at ram starting at &4QG0, 
would be: I E,&4O0Q. 

Once in the memory editor you can move 
about the screen via the cursor keys. Control- 
up or Control-down skips back or forward a 
page. Pressing Return or Enter toggles you 
between Hex and Ascii mode. 

All in all a very neat fob that reminds me 
very much of the I MED1T command in 
Arnor's Utopia. Look out for something nice 
in the post, Niall. 

Phew. That's my lot for another... It's a girl. 
Sorry. She's a girl. Vax and Suz have a baby 
girls, 61 b 3oz. They are going to call her Kate. 
You'll have to excuse me now, I have to trot 
off and wet the baby's head. Keep those tips 
and pokes coming in. Vax will be back next 
month. Maybe. 



The figures in the left hand 
column of the Irsting below. 
show it hss- been checksum- 
med by ACU Proofreader, the 
real-time type-in tester pub¬ 
lished in the September 1988 
issue of Amsirad Computer User You don't need 
ACU Proofreadtf to be able to run this listing, but 
having it makes spotting typing errors very easy. 

[71] t 1 Henory Editor by Niall Brady . 
[723 2 1 Press RET to toggle hex/ascii 
[733 3 ' 

CD33 100 DATA 21,7e,93,01,09,90,«3,d1, 
be,(e,Pfi,c3,10,90,c5,0fl,6&fl 
[7E] 110 DATA e&,Z2,6d,93,1T,28,ff,19, 
Z2,75,93,2T,0ti,07,22,4f,H« 

[313 120 DATA 93,2i,3f,22,7t,93,3e,02# 
£d,0e,bt,td,06,b9,21,@B,5 a 2 
EBB] 132 data 38,11,80,93,*T,0M8,«d, 
b0,cd,@9,b9,21,00,[0,06,578 
[70] H0 DATA 19,c5,3»,75,f3,e4,f0,90, 
3a,78,93,32,7a,93,3a,79,7a4 
[75] 150 DATA 93,32,7b,93,3a,7*,93,td, 
f@,90,dd,2T,78,93,06,04,776 
[39] 160 DATA cd,98,90,23,23,cd,87,90, 
e5,2a,75,93,11,12,00,19,672 
[84] 170 DATA 22,75,93,e1,cT,10,ca,d, 
54,91,2a,6d,93,11,c2,01,74t 
[051 180 DATA I9,22,6d,93,c3,3t,9fl,dfi, 
2a,75,93,06,12,cd f aa,90,6fS 
[91] 190 DATA dd r 2s,75,93,@6,12,23,23, 
c5,dd,7e,00,cs,le,91 ,06,6flf 
[0C] 200 DATA @1,ed,ce,90,dd,?3,cT,1@, 
ef,«9,c5,dd,7t,00,cd,f0,992 


► 


Amstracf User October 1988 


Page 4 J 









































HACKING 


tFF] 210 DATA 9&,3a,78,93,(d,1e,91,06 
01,Ed,ce,90,3a,?9,93,cd,796 
tm 22# DAT A lM1JMVd,ce,?Md 
23,23y(1,10,(fd,c?,e5,01,761 
f9F] 230 DATA 0M1,cd,d8,9B,e1,23,c9 
(5,65,13,77,23,13,1#, fa, 786 
[6f] 240 DATA el,01,00,#8,09,3#,B4,01, 
50,cl,i?,c1,0(1,20,39, (9,4«1 
tl7] 25# DATA *5,21,00,00,22,73,93,21, 

73.93, «d,6f,«d,&f,cri,4f,72f 

C75] 260 DATA 91,f|,#a,d4,lb,91,(6,30, 

32,?e,95,7e,cd,4f,P1,f*,875 

[291 270 DATA 0a,d4,Tb,91,c6,3#,32,79, 
93,e1,c9,c6,07,c9,t5,f5,id8 
[FF1 28# DATA fe,0#,28,23,f1,Z6,B0,6f, 
11,08,#0,c5,4c,7d,06,10,48c 
H9] 290 DATA 21,00,M,d),39,Tf,30,0T, 
I9,eb,29,eb,t0,f5,c1,eb,63e 
[903 300 DATA 21,80,93,1?,eb,el,c9,11, 

80.93, fd,el,fd, fit, (9,07,992 

[5C3 310 DATA 07,0?,07,c9,cd,4#,93,fe, 
0d,ca,10,92,fe,f0,ca,22,7cf 
[DA] 32# DATA 92,fe,f1,ta,43,92,fe,f2, 
ca,64,92,fe,f3,ea,87,92,ba4 
mi 350 DATA. fe,f'd,:a,1d,93,fe,f9,ca, 
7a,9#,fr,fc,ca,fS,3a,77,ba5 
[D3] 340 DATA 9S,fe,#0,2fl,S We,61, 
d4,51,93,fe,47,30,c5,fe,942 
[92] 350 SATA 3#,3#,c1,Cd,03,92,?a,6f, 
93,24,22,6f ,93,cd,4f,91,6ac- 
[573 36# DATA 47,cd,4#,SJ,ff,fi1,d4,ST, 
P3,fe,47,30,f4,fe,30,3i,8cd 
[97] 370 DATA f#,2a,6f,93,25,22,6f,93, 
cd,03,92,8«,f5,2a,7T,P3,76a 


[7C] m DATA cd,75,hb,f1,cd,54,93,cd, 
5d,bb,2a,if,93,7c,fe,3d,96a 
a?] 390 DATA d2,fla,92,c3,54,91,f1,cd, 
5a,bb,f5,2s,6f,93,cd,75,9ec 
CE7] 400 DATA bb, fl,cd, 54,93,cd,ea,91, 
ie,c 0 J 6 , 02 , 4 f,(d, 4 f, 9 f,aa 4 
CIA] 41# DATA #6,0f,fe,0a,30,04,ci,30, 
18,02,c6,37,td,5a,bb,79,699 
[F0] 420 DATA 10 l ea,c9,cd,5a,ah,d6,30, 
f«,0a,30,01,cM6,07,c9,S57 
[46] 430 DATA 3a,77,93,b7,24,07,af,32, 
77,93,(3,54,91,3e,0T,eJ,6bf 
C2D] 440 DATA 17,9?,2a,6f,93,2d,7d,fe, 
01,da,54,9f,22,6f,93,2a,68 b 
[2El 450 DATA 71,93,2d,22,71,93,2a, 6 d, 
93,11,ee,ff,19,22,6d,93,6ba 
[98] 460 DATA c3,54,91,2a,6f,93,2c, 7 d, 
fe,1a,d2,54,91,22,6f,93,7?# 

[DC] 470 DATA 2a,71,93,2t,22,?1,91,2a, 
6d,93,11,12,00,19,22,6d,475 
CEE] 480 DATA 93,e3,54,91,fi,6f,93,25, 
25,25,7c,f(,07,da,fS,92 / 7b8 
[0DJ 490 DATA 22,if,93,2a,71,93,25,22, 
71,93,2a,6d,93,11,ff,ff,6di 
C24] 500 DATA 19,22,6d,93,c3,54,91,2a, 
4d,93,11,01,00,19,22,6(1,4c7 

[37] 510 DATA 93,2a,6f,93,24,24,24,7c, 
fe,3d,d2 f aa,92,22,fif,93,714 

[38] 52# DATA 2a,7t,91,24,22,71,93,(3, 
54,91,2e,7d,fe,1a,d2,e7,79a 

[D7] 530 DATA 92,22,Af,93,2a,71,93,2c, 
22,71,93,3e,07,32,70,95,5b# 

[DC] 540 DATA 3e,3f,32,72,93,(3,54,91, 
21,19,3a,22,6f,93,26,5#,56a 


[9C] 550 SATA U t 71,93,?a,75,93,11,7e, 
fc,19,22,75,93,2a,6d,?3,64e 
[7[] 56# DATA 2b,?2,6d,93,(3,3(,9§,21, 
01,07,22,6f,93,26,3f,22,4b# 

[20] 570 DATA 71,93,(3,3(,90,2d,7d,fe, 
#1,da,c8,9?,22,6f,P3,2&,7b* 

[Ef] 380 DATA 71,95,2d f 22,71>93,3e,3a, 
32,70,93,3e,50,32,72,93,5(9 
C6F3 59# DATA Za,6d,93,ll,ff,ff,19,22, 
6d,93,c3,54,9f,2a,75,93,74e 
[DC] 620 DATA 11,7t,f(,19,22,75,93,11, 
3«,fe,2i,6d,93,19,22,6d,5eb 
[60] 610 DATA 93,t3,3c,90,ctf,75,bb,cd, 
51,bb,£d,06,bb,:3,64,b!j,9bS 

[921 62# DATA 3a,77,93,fe,#T,?M5e2i, 
6f,93,18,68,2 a,71,93, IS,5e2 
[ft] 630 DATA e3,ed,2«,c9,2a,71,93,24, 
22,71,93,2 a,6f,93,24,24,6a6 
[19] 640 DATA 24,22,6^,93,2a,6d,93,77, 
23,?2,6d,93,c9,00,00,0#,4f7 
[EE] 65# DATA 0#,00,00,00,0#,0#,00,00* 

[6E] 66# HEHOflT SSFFf 
[AD] 670 n= 16:a-i90##;L= 100(UHILE U 
660rGOS|f0 M0;#END:&OT{) 72# 

[26] 680 (s=#:FOH x=1 TO n:READ vS:v=Y 
AMTtvDrFQKJE j,v 

[05] 69# ;s-c^v3a=a+1rN£KT]4EAD c*:t= 
VALfT+cJ) 

[30] 7## if COCS THE* PRINHata erro 
r in line J ,hEND 
[F0] 710 1*1*10:RETURN 
CF9] 720 CALL S9#00f initialise fi&X 
t4B] 730 iE,# 



The 


truth 


about 


TELEX 


Page 42 


How much « cost 

to go on ToiOXT machine The cheapest will 

separate tetepnone line- f l09 jyyi prices include VAT.| 

X the drat year 4 a usees** ^ ^ yMr compo!f r'o Ocut* 

Into » ToloXntX . teco|nmun|Mttons software (seethe 

All you need is a mode" ^VtSeXnt and a subscription to McroLtnk- 
advertisements in this issue I, services available to Amstrad * Jser V°° ^ 

But WHY tMSO TO/OX7 hetvneen businesses Today 

&JS?£g2S2S2r ~-.•—«■* 

SSSSSS s—” 

conventional way do«n t offer to *nd or recede 

Sec Page 29 

Amstrad User October 1988 






















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19-S8 — March: Dan Dare II — full 
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Scruples from Virgin. Educational 
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Microstuffer - printer buffer. Mas¬ 
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April: Cage rom the ultimate 
viewdata fool, Basic Tutor on 
interrupts, Flying Shark, PAW 
adventure creator, Hewsorrs Anar¬ 
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writing adventures, Isobot listing. 
May: Part one of Jill Lawson's art 
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June: Part one of Auntie John's 
machine code,- Basic Tutor on 
boolean logic, Adventure writing 
final pan. Micro Music Creator, 
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Nebulus full review, Cybemoid, 
Gothic, L.A, Swat, Revenge of Doh, 
Driller solution. Creeper lizting, AS 
nought and crosses, Amstrad 
espionage. 

July: The agony of creating 
Rimrunner, AJ reading the key¬ 
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Brunword 6128, Wops, Origin of 
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Master patch, reviews of Enlighten¬ 
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August: Beyond Ice Palace guide, 
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September: Rom roundup, Dark 
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firmware, Basic Tutor on arrays. 
Proofreader listing, PEP Talk and 
Protext Office reviewed, 
Mindfighter and Smashed adven¬ 
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Lawson. 


| £ 1.50 each 


.Amstrad User October 1988 


Page 43 

























































































O. J. SOFTWARE 

FAST FRIENDLY SERVICE 


ADVENTURE Cut Due 

JrnclBf Only--£15 ® 

Barns Tale £2.&o £it.® 
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Nabiiw...„£750 £11® 

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FLTHrfioalJ-5..©.50 £750 

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Magic Uadis 44.... £9.50 £11® 

Madia Mania$-12,... £9.50 £11® 
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German Ma&lBr..... £15® £16® 

Spanish Tuts ..£1 a.® £16.® 

lalan Tutor_£11® £16.® 

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Stave Qavto Snooker_£' 50 

YogiBaw.....£190 

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TaiiCed ..80 

Super Suninan___^.,.£1.80 

Super Hen.._£1.» 

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towd r. £1.60 

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Fruit UadwieSin ..£1.50 

Gram? Ptlx Sim.£|® 

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Etiepean 5a Side_ £190 

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F ! epeye 90 

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Prcte CPUr- Version 

PhriHto Rem____©3® 

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Mrmay Manager |*PCWl) ...£ 24 ® 

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VBA 


Problems with a 
program that doesn't 
seem to work? 

If you're a member of MicroLink 
the answer's simple. Tell your 
troubles to the MicroLink Bulletin 
Board — the biggest, brightest and 
best bulletin board in Britain. 



You'll find that someone out there 
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Details from 0625 B788&8 


STOCKMARKET ^ 

THERE'S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BUY! 

STOCKMARKET enables you to record details of purchases, sales and 
dividends of shares, unit trusts etc. Current share prices can tie entered very 
easily at any lime for an automatic folio revaluation. Values of share prices* 
indexes etc, can be recorded, listed and plotted along with moving averages, 
Practice buying and selling shares. Sec if your intuition is right. 

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT 

* Record full details of your portfolios of stocks, shares, unit trusts etc. 

* Practice buying and selling and accurately record your progress. 

* Up to fifty shares per folio. As many folios as you like, 

* Buy and sell shares with auiomaiie calculation of dealing costs, 

* Ten sets of dealing costs which you can alter 86 necessary. 

* Record dividend yields and price earnings ratios, 

* Update prices and automatically update yields and P/E ratios and 
automatically recalculate individual share and total folio values. 

* Record dividend payments and total dealing costs. 

* Keep records of your cash as you buy and sell. 

* List your folio, past transactions, dividends and cash accounts. 

PRICE ANALYSIS 

* Record share prices, unit trusts, indexes, exchange rates etc, 

* Store up to 2&0 prices per .share (e.g, weekly prices fori years}. 

* Plot pnees and moving averages on a logarithmic or linear scale. 

* Real prices supplied as a demonstration fi ne. FT 30, B. Telecom) 

* Use curves as a guide to the best buying and selling opportunities. 

Comprehensive forty page manual. 

Complete with demonstration account and prices 


AMSTRAD PCW t PC* IBM PC & compatibles £39,95 
AMSTRAD CPC (disc) £29.95 

I 1, rice* art «|( kncluslvi wotklwldt. Send cheque hit LrwilL cird number 

ur telephone for Itaiiiriktf dfUviry by first class pott 

38 Balcaskie Road, 
... London, SE91HQ 

SCMJ'ffWSU’® us* Tel; 01-8507057 


MERIDIAN E3 


Page 44 


Amstrad User October 1988 























SHACKLED 

YOUR friends have gone and got 
themselves locked up and it is up to 
you to free them. The usual tech' 
nique of getting a good lawyer, 
raising bail and greasing palms 
wouldn't make a very good action 
game so off you gc r armed to the 
molars with small brown projectiles 
which look for all the world like 
chocolate chip cookies. 

This ordinary county fail is full of 
nasties outside the cells, a ! intent on 
dofng you very little good. Your 
killer cookies make short work of 
them, but this in no way furthers 
your mission of mercy. 

Dotted about the place are doors 
which can be shot - a variety of : 
things lurk behind them. There 
could be an extra weapon token to 
give better attack, defence or speed 
las in Gauntlet \. ft could be one of 
your pals, who tag along adding 
extra firepower and different weap¬ 
ons a la Salamander), 

Or you could uncover a nest of 



whfd 

a bit w*e , ne pJayrng area is 

LC' J.“"J* 1 taw «* 

rZ7T rp ^ ay ,s 91 

C* def,n " e W VoXuy 


ninja, all of who m a re dete rntined to 
n i nj you to the best of th esr abi lity. At 
least when the ninja have been 
ninjed you get to keep the small 
change which falls from their 
pockets. 

Once you have freed as many of 
your pals as you can be bothered to, 


you have to escape the level by 
^ding the door cryptically marked 
EXIT. A harder level ensues, with 
more nasties, more friends and less 
door keys going spare. 

The game is a multi-loader, but is 
handled quite well despite this. 
Levels are loaded eight at a time in 


about 20 seconds. If the first set has 
not been completed, it remains in 
memory. The graphics are ade¬ 
quate, if a little badly defined; and 
the sound is workmanlike, 

Author: Date East for US Gold 
Price: £9.99 tape, £14.99 disc 


NINJA SCOOTER SIMULATOR 



*uy a pair of sunglasses 

f 0T this one. Instead ot 
the usual washed out 
hreens and blues, you will be 
amazed to see bright oranges an 
yellows being used to give 
of colour. I have a suspicion it s too 

lythoogh Showtime lined,. 

completed eight lev els, 

M 


YOU are In charge of the Dream 
Scooter. Despite its grand name, 
this conveyance is a miserly affair 
without even an engine to its name. 
AH you have to do is pedal your way 
along a scrolling pavement and 
cross the finishing line as quickly as 
possible. 

Tnere are, of course nasties to 
avoid, and they are rather original, 
\r\ the first level there are holes ip the 
road, gates which you have to ?ump 
over and ramps, 

To gain points you whizz up the 


ramo as fast as possible then 
waggle the joystick like mad when 
you are flying through the air. By 
doing this the scooter performs roils 
and somersaults. The more acro¬ 
batics, the more points. 

If you manage to land on the 
wheels, the word RAD appears 
momentarily over the scooter and 
you gain an extra 100 to 1,000 
points, if you land on your head, you 
pick yourself up automatically, but 
lose time, 

Ridged bits of pavement like cattle 




grids cause the scooter to vibrate 
and slowdown when you run across 
them, alarm clocks give you a few 
extra seconds when you run over 
them, and square pulsating things 
give you powers like Superman. 

The second and subsequent levels 
have more cattle grids, gates, pul¬ 
sating things, plus cars, skulls, mad 
gun-totin' cowboys and skateboar¬ 
ders who rush towards you and try 
and knock you over. 


After the first five levels things 
suddenly become difficult. The 
levels become longer, the number of 
nasties doubles, and the number of 
cattle grids quadruples. 

The best thing about this game is 
the graphics. They are brilliantly 
coloured and detailed and there is 
no problem with a green screen. The 
scrolling is jerky, but the game h so 
fast you don't really notice this. The 
sound is excellent - a three-channel 
tune (no effects I which plays con¬ 
tinuously. All in all, an outstanding 
budget game, 

Author: Probe for SHverbird 

Price: £1.99 tape 












































BIONIC COMMANDO 


EUROPEAN 

5-A-SIDE 


EUROPEAN 5-a-Side is a bit like 
sawn-off table football viewed from 
a hove with barriers around the side 
to avoid throw-ins and other 
complexities. In a way it is fairly 
faithful to realfive-a-sirie, as long as 
it is being played by creatures who 
vary 3n sije with direction. 

Two types of kick are possible - 
the low pass, which is handy for 
scoring, and the high lob, which is 
handy for not very much at all. 
When the ball is lobbed an impres¬ 
sion of height is given by the ball 
growing to golf ball sire, obscuring 
any players who may happen to be 
underneath, then shrinking to 
normal, 

The game can be played by one or 
two players over 6,10 or 20 minutes. 
While the two-player game can be a 
great strategic fight, the single 
player against the computer is a bit 
of a no-no. 

It would seem that the opposition 
are quite obviously ex-Glasgow I 


AZARGQN missile has two ends - a 
right end and a wrong end, the latter 
being the one which hit Earth first 
This had the instant effect of demol¬ 
ishing most of the buildings and 
turning virtually all the folks into 
doner kebabs. 

Ten years have elapsed since the 
apocalypse and the Bionic Com mam 
dos are ready to send the aliens 
home as stains on blotting paper. 
These biomechanical bozos have 
two main attributes - an extending 
grappling arm and a very large gun. 

The bionic arm allows the wearer 
to grab nearby platforms in order to 
climb up to them or swing from 
them. It also allows bonus weapons 
to be caught. 

The first level is a fairly standard 
blast from bottom left to top right of 
a smoothly scrolling treescape. Bees 
live in the trees and get rather uppity 
if their hive is tampered with. 

Some branches are rotten, and 
snap, causing a new commando to 
be parachuted in if a truly enormous 
fall occurs. Mines are dotted about 
and prove to be fit for the purpose 
for which designed, to misquote the 


Rangers players since they move in 
a semi-random fashion, usually 
towards their own goal. 

At least the goalie is good; he, she 
or it fthis is an equal opportunities 
review] offers the only resistance to 
the players' George Best-like storm 
up the pitch. 

Despite the 
of 8-0 for the TO 
quite possible, so 


game its appeal would wane very 
rapidly. In this respect, European 
5-a-Side scores badly against other 
football games, but its simple and 
speedy dual-play mode compen¬ 
sates reasonably well. 


Authors: Timothy Clous and 
Andrew Rogers for 
Siiverbird 
Price: £ 1.99 tape 


EUROPEAN 5- a 
Rot the best fo 0 

Mds that accolade. The adi 
an extra human mates th< 
delta neat - maybe I'll < J0 a 

^'^f-butthebudg 
a "djuddersare stiff notk 


Trade Descriptions Act. 

The next level is the entrance to 
the aliens' base, situated under a 
castle. Wall mounted cannon and 
electric wires make this level a tad 
difficult for your average power- 
assisted shock trooper, Kamikazes 
and rock-throwing super aliens 
rapidly cause the trigger finger to 
buzz. 

Three more levels await Our Nero, 
each chocfcful of aliens willing to 
prove that they got there first. 

Bionic Commando h almost a 
direct Spectrum conversion, but for 
once It has been done quite well 

The graphics, although rea¬ 
sonably detailed, have no colour at 
all, and are fitted into the familiar 
shrunken screen. Colour and -green 
screen versions live on opposite 
sides of the tape or disc. 

Sound is merely adequate, 
despite the fact that it was done by 
one of the Spectrum's top 
sound smiths. 


Author: Software Creations for 
Go! 

Price: €9.99 tape, €14.99 disc 


to'V'ws :- 

d‘S»»r- 
cr - vws 

T ^e graphics are pretty rtiro k * 
d ' C game. Although 8^" 


Commando i s rlthaf 
it pains me t0 sal , M . 

beu4wll| ! belt 


A ms trad User October 1988 





















































GET SMART! 


Protect Your Computing Equipment With 
BBD PROFESSIONAL DUST COVERS 


• In todays economic climate where equipment failure costs time 
and money protecting your hardware from wear and tear is the 
smart thing to do and the smart way lo do it is with dust covers 
from the BBD Professional Range. 

• Manufactured in top quality dart; grey washable nylon and attrac¬ 
tively finished with red piping BBD covers are simply the smartest 
protective covers available. 

• BBD covers can be washed and ironed without fear of fading or 
shrinking and wilt never crack or lose their shape, 

• Wilh all these superlative features you might expeci BBD covers 
to be a little expansive, Nothing could be further from the truth. 


COVERS FOR THE AMSTRAD CPC 464 - £7,50 
COVERS FQH THE AMSTRAD CPC 612B - £7.50 

Please state Colour or Monochrome monitor 

• BBD also offer a wide range of matching covers for printers from 
only £5,00. 

• These include Am si rad DMP 2000, 2160, 3000 and 3160, 
Amstrad DMP 4000 and LQ350Q, and a selection from Brother, 
Canon, Citizen, Epson, Star etc. etc, Generally covers for 80 
column printers are £5.00 and for 132 column £0.00, 


GET SMART! GET BBD! 

BBD COMPUTED DUST COVERS 
The Standish Centre, Cross Street, Standish, Wigan 
WN6 0HQ. 

_ Teh 02S7 422968 (Ext. 152). Fax 0257 423909 

y ^ CaHer and Dealer enquiries welcome. 


A SMALL SELECTION FROM OUR WAREHOUSE 


HARDWARE & PERIPHERALS 

HRP 

WAVE 


Amstrad CF’Cfiiaa Cornpular + Green Mt>n Disc Drive. ^‘3 S SyW 

.299 99 

254.99 

ANC 

Amstrad CPC612S Compiler * Cdour Mon : Disc Dnvc J-'S S 5W 

.399.99 

356.00 

AM-C 

Amstrad PCW9512 CorTpularfW.P. f Vlcn 4 Daisywtieel Print*!. 

.573.S5 

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-S03.e5 

661.42 

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Romantic Robe: Mult lace 2 - CPC. 

...48 95 

36,45 

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DD i hi 3" Disc Drive me Cable & inte-iace- CPC164. 

.159.95 

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B 

Pace 2nd 5.26" Drive inc. Cable, Utace £ &W - CPC6126 

. 209 30 

171.81 

C 

Ams'rad GMP21&D Par F-&T NIC Printer ine. Cable lor CPC. 

.169.00 

144.69 

A 

Brother HRS Par Thermal aaltcry Primer |P£U optonai'i. 

.159-95 

49.95 

9 

Star LC10 Parcel F4T NLQ Printer ;ne« mooell. 

.26335 

19D.93 

A 

Lead, Printer Cemmnics Parallel - CPC. 

.1494 

7.4a 

F 

Amslraci MR? Modu aior/PSU - CPC464.''e64,'6120. 

...29.95 

2S.45 

D 

Ribbon Ftenking Nyoni - Df/R2D00,'‘3ffl>D Range . 

Ribbon Fabric - PCWS25&/8512-LQ36M. 

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4.16 

5,40 

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.PKt2 

6.30 

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5.40* 

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Dual Cover 2 Piece Set - CPC (State model). 

....963 

5.61 

D 

Camnndqe Computer ?SS PonaWe Computer . 

.267 50 

244.35. 

a 

13A 4 Gang in line Socket w-lh 3 yards Flex £ I3A Plug. 

... 13.97 

6.25 

D 

blank discs s software 




Campbell Masterlile 3 CPC 6126 . 

...39.95 

£9.96 

E 

Sag* ^opuiar.Aecounls CPCG13H PCW. 

.100 05 

70.04 

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Sage- Popu i p Slock & Invoicing - CPC&13L'PC W. 

. 70.15 

49.11 

D 

Sage Popular Payroll - CPC6120.‘PCW.... 

...70.15 

49.11 

D 


CURRENT CHART GAMES SOFTWARE RETAIL LESS 30%, El PIP 


Amsoh 3 b Discs DSWkll 3' Drives. Bos 10 17 39 

Bulk S.S’ 1 PSi'DD 135TPI Blank Discs... Pkt 10 0 75 

Bulk 5.25 H DfivDD 40f&GT Blank Discs... PkL 10 0.75 

Crcsrtey 11" * 9 5“ Listing Paper 60g.2odd Shis $.23 

AMS2QL T Cksc Slorage Bo* Holds up to 46 discs........ 0.4 Z 

Send tl"ee i Bp stamps lor last moving items price list. Siare for which products 
England JXJSI & ins,; [A) £5.00. (Bl £4.00, <C| £3.00, |0) £2.00. (E| £l .00, (F) 50p 
(AMCI 3 Day £4 DO. Heart Day £12.00. UK Poslal Charge £6 per 20Kg boVCSOO 

All Prices include VAT. All sales subject to our Trade Terms ol Trading. 


W.A.V.E, (Trade Dept. ACU 1088 ) 

WALMEY AUDIO VISUAL & ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION 
53 Siltarwaler Crescent, Barrow-in-Furness, 
Cumbria LA14 3JR Telephone: 0229 29109 
Hours: Mon.-Fri, 10-5.00 



School Software Ltd.. Taul Business Centra, DonUc St., Ltnwlck, Ireland 

FREE Cptaloguo Amstrad CPC, PCW, PCI012, 
Commodore, BBC, IBM PC T MSOOS. 

Add itionmi Dufers I Wanted. 24 Mr. triuMocfU HorMnt, 
Htng UK 010030-01404 77 (Offtcm Hour*) \M. O0 1-4 3000), 
Dtroct UK Ol0093*8140399 {24 tv.) 

ORDER HOW »>*» B*l*w. 

MAXI.MAT HE fag* tt-1 5|. Amstrad PC. IBM PC, 

Amatrad CPC-1. Tnan^H* Z Angles, 3, SlnCosTan 
4 Rectangles. 5 Circles, 

c:. r oes a very sfomdtaei^te4™rtg#nvirp™rtenf. 

MAGIC MATH* fug* 4-8), cbm W. IBM PC, 

Amstrad CPC. PCW, PC. 

Addition and Subtraction 'A senpus challenge r Jo simitar BSC 
programs and a good example of its type" PTM fUK), 

MATHS MANIA fag* 8-1 3|. CBM 64/IBM P&AmstTld 
CPC, PCW. PC 

Mpltipticaiion And Division “ ti appeals to the age group My ton 
has been speaking dcwnslaus before break tasf to oiav“. 

SBC CEEFA* 

BETTER SPELLING lag* 8-adultA Amstiads.' 

C8M SA'BBC.'IBM PC. 

' 'WSfff Organised Lessons". ' A proper course which approaches 
speiting problems *ith specific dxdrci$e$ ". £ $ T ( UK.). 

BETTER MATHS (age 12-1 ft). All Amstreds/CBM 64,' 

IBM PC 

Rated in the tap five in an adualicvMrsun/ey. 

CHEMISTRY |vg* 12*1fi). CBM frueSGflBM PC/All 
.Am&lradE CPC, PCW, PC 

' 'Very ambitious in terms Ol Ihe range of topics fiigh StandStd Of 
questions. ' 

BIOLOGY (aga 12-16[ I AnutaMbCBM 64*BBC. 1 IBM PC. 

' 'A jjoott pxCitie to pity itflf tur ran^>ulerarW have JUn white 
revising". Vouf Computer. 

MAPWORK 0UI2 18m dull). Amsirycl CPC. CBM 64, mC 

Excetieni graphics and setsna jo this program covering most aspects at jfie Geography of 

Hnfeirr and itpi$nd. Great ton tor aft the family 

PHYSICS jag* 12-10), Cbm 64, Amstrad CPC, PCW & PC 1612, IBM 

"A cotourfuf way of revising tar GCSE'tJ-Lene, 1 ejeaminarton , Your Computer. 

PLAYSCHOOL MATHS (ag* 2*Tj, Amstran CPC. 

Si* of 3fie bear programs for ffw .Dre-scfTool and young children 

GEOGRAPHY fag* 13-17), Amstrad CPC 4 CBM 64 

Comprehensive oova-age of aspects of geography. 

BUSINESS DYNAMICS, PC 1S12 MSOOS. ihm PC. 

Syperf) Dt/staess simulation far sludenr or adulf Be the boss, ,mn 
a company and team i^hife yCv relax Cffl 95 

^ lj Lj J IJ 1 ^ i-J |-J 


EVERYMAN ACCOUNTS Amstrad PC. Am&lrad PCW 
MSDOS 

77ws is designed for very smart businesses, the seif ■errvifDyed and 
home accounting, fr handles art Ifie essenrtar transactions df a 
very small tMtaess ar an tecredfaif p«Cte Issues professional 
slyle invoices, fssues Atonr.hJy Sra lemenfs fssrres Statements lor 
ALL Accounts due Who (mes yOO money? What are your 
Outstanding debts and Dirts. Nominal Ledger flepods Gel yOur 
VAT Totals. CarTfwndto thpvtfjWKfs pf aepounta rf required. 
£39.95 

TAIT DATABASEfLABELLEP t Amstrad PCW 

Superb way la keep records or pnnt labels. Excellent features 

£29.96 

FINANCE MANAGER A VAT,AmM Pf:wfl?5fi, , 5U. 
FTecordS and prints expentrtlure, receipJs and VAT. f ffl.95. 


K 



ORDER DIRECT TO? School Software Lid Tait Bmimm Csnrfre 
Dcmiritc St., Ume r iM Ireland. Tel. |UK) 410363-6145399. 

Education Discs £16,05 Telecom Gold 7Z:MAG32425 
Cass £10.95 tCI-OOp-p.} F*kO rder* (m0-353)-6>-i43l5 

Accass-Vlastarcara.'E ^rocara- Ba^iaycard-Viss Expiry dale 

Card No I lilt I I I I 11 I I I I I I I I I 
| | Gheque/PG made payable to Eaaibvsiness Sysiems 
My Machine.. 

Name _ 

Address _ _ 


.Tillies 


ACU 


Ckxia 


Amstrad User October 1938 


Page 47 



































































everything! 

YOU NEED 1 
TO KNOW 
ABOUT 
DESKTOP 
PUBLISHING 



The Desktop Publishing 
Yearbook 1988 is an 
invaluable buyer's guide 
containing the most detailed 
survey available of hardware, software 
and services in the electronic publishing 
field. 

And there are clearly-written "how-to" 
articles for both the newcomer to 
Desktop Publishing and the experienced 
user. 

Articles cover single-user and multi* 
user publishing systems, publishing 
software, laser and other electronic 
printers, matrix printers, digitisers and 
scanners, computer typesetting, 
magazine and newspaper composition, 
documents and forms creation, bureau 
services, word processors, and many 
other key topics. 

This unrivalled reference source was 
enthusiastically received by visitors to 
the recent Desktop Publishing Show, 

You can purchase your own copy for 
only £2.50 (plus p&p) - a saving of £2,50 
on the normal price. Simply fill in the 
coupon and send it to the address 
below. 


ORDER COUPON 


Please send me. 


jcopy/copies of the Desktop Publishing 


Yearbook 1938 at £?.50 each plus 50p p&p per book. {UK only) 


Li I enclose a cheque payable to Database Exhibitions 
□ Please debit my Access/Visa card no: 

Expiry 

1 I I LI LI 1 1 i Mill I 1 1 1 I date: 


I 


Signed 


Nam* 


Address 



Postcode- 


nSerrcfto, Desktop Publishing Yearbook, Database Exhibitions, 
Eoropa House, Arlington Park, Ad ling ton, Macclesfield SKlO 4NP 


I 



DISC MANAGER AND COPIER 


Now upgraded with 'Simulated ROM' option. 
Comprehensive, Easy-to-use and Fast. Don't miss ft 


* Contrary to rumour, will not duplicate chocolate 
1 biscuits. Price £14.95 ina postage. ALL CPC 


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GM CHESS 


CHESS GAME & TUTOR 

The ULTIMATE strategy game. 

At last available in a package designed for beginners. 
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enjoy a game of Fast chess (very addictive) or normal 
chess against the computer solve chess problems or 
watch the computer play itself. Fufly featured including 
manual selection of openings, 0,1 ,cr2 players, 7 levels, 
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Price; £14,95 (disc only) inc. postage. ALL CPC 

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NEMESIS (ACU) TEL: (0933) 623967 

ID Carlow Road, Rmgslead, KeMering, Norlhants, NN14 4DW 



Amstrad User October 198$ 



















































REVIEW 



7 




NIGHT RAIDER 


ITs late May 1941, You are a dive 
bomber pilot aboard HMS Ark 
al.Your mission is to sink the 
Nazi battleship Bismarck. 

Your plane sfijts off on deck. 
Although you are the pilot, you can 
become the tail gunner, the eng¬ 
ineer or the navigator by pressing a 
key. 

To take off you have to move 
certain levers or the engineer's 
screen and release the brakes, You 
then return to the pilot's screen, pull 
the joystick back, and you're 
airborne. 

When In the air you will see lights 
reflecting off the water, enemy 
aircraft attacking and shells 
exploding around you. In defence, 
you can fire the machine guns in 
front of the cockpit or switch to the 
tail gunner's screen if the enemy is 
attacking fro mi behind. 

You will also be under attack from 
E-boats and the dangerous U-boats, 
submarines which the navigator 
cannot see. They fire torpedoes at 
the Ark Royal and anti-aircraft guns 
at you. 

While evading all these dangers, 
you have to keep watching the 
navigator's screen in order to spot 
the Bismarck and get advance warn¬ 
ing of enemy attacks. The display is 
updated as you watch. 

You must also check the engin¬ 
eers screen to make sure you are 
not running out of fuel or having 
mechanical problems, and keep an 
eye on the altimeter, compass, arti- 


game programmers 
often put a lot of effort 
Into historical accuracy 
into presentation, but this 
lectacular exception- 

graphics are superb. Tbe iia 1 * 

J control P»"«' are ** 
ted, the artificial horizon rolls 


you th o ught wargames 
were only played with ■ 
r lead soldiers on giant 

landscaped tables by retired colo¬ 
nels reliving their past victories, 
think again. This program bungs 

everything right up to date. 

Ifs as difficult as you want it to be, 
with excellent arcade sequencesand 
a lot of strategy- 


ficial horizon, air 
and other i 
panel. A light will fl 
needs attention on one 


ing 
other 


screens. 

If something goes wrong in mid* 
flight you can return to The Ark Royal 
for repairs, refuelling and restocking 
ammunition. 

Landing on the deck is the most 
difficult part of The game. You have 
to be very careful about rate of 
descent and altitude otherwise you 
will crash into the deck, crash into 


convincingly - TeTaritus 

.cresnislbctelThce^ 

levers to -move and caches ^ 

3nd a '’ t r,he ccrt«i place, press 
ST and everything happens 
quickly and smoothly 


the sea, or overshoot and have to 
turn around and try again, 

If you have to ditch, do it gently 
and you will be rescued. 

Choosing a flight path is very 
easy. You just select a point or the 
navigator's screen, return to the 
pilot's screen, line the aircraft's 
bearing up with a mark which 
appears on the compass and you 
will automatically fly towards the 
point you chose, 

If you manage to keep going for 
long enough in the correct direction 
you will eventually find the 
Bismarck. It is well defended with 
radar, searchlights and anti-aircraft 
guns, so you will have to fly very low 
over the water, release your 


torpedoes, then return to the Ark 
Royal, 

If you are lucky the Bismarck will 
have sunk,, the Ark Royal will have 
survived, and you will have won. 

This all sounds complicated and 
difficult, and so it is. However, there 
is a very good practice mode which 
allows you to try out the difficult 
parts such as takeoff and landing 
before attempting a full mission, 

There are five levels of difficulty, 
with more and more attackers on 
each level. 


Author: Dave Pridmore and 
Greg Holmes for Gremlin 
Graphics 

Price: £$.99 tape, £14.99 disc 


I PLAYED Hails of the 
Things once, then gave 
up, Why? Because there 
were about 20 keys you could press 
and I kept getting confused. Night 
Raider is so incredibly easy to con¬ 
trol and is so addictive it deserves to 
become popular. 

That might encourage more com¬ 
panies to produce the decent war 
g a me$ th at A mo Id n eed s. [/ 


Arnstrad User October 1988 


Page 49 


















































FOOTBALL MANAGER 2 


LOADING is slow. After what seems 
several aeons - give or take an era - 
the delightful strains of Sousa's The 
Stars and Stripes Forever ring out, 
This tune is known to some as Be 
Kind to Your Web-footed Friends but 
is better known as Here We Go, Here 
We Go, Here We Go. The subtlety of 
the lyrical nuance is delightfully 
understated. 

After choosing keyboard or joy- 
stick, a list of teams is offered, Obvi¬ 
ously Mr Toms - the originator - 
uses an obscure method of com¬ 
puter telepathy at this stage because 
the team you will want is not on the 
list; the omission of Ardrossan 
Winton Rovers is a great loss to 
humanity. 

Sponsorship is the next offering. 
This allows you up to £50,000 in¬ 
stant cash. It will need to be spent 
fairly early on, as the initial squad is 
desperately small. 

The next important business is the 
team position selection. The new 
system: a! am marking of the oppo¬ 
sition and half-time substitution, at 
which time the team can be re¬ 
shuffled if improvements are 
deemed necessary. 

The opposition positions and 
skills are shown, and you can either 
match skill with skill, or attempt to 
exploit a weak spot. 

Next comes the match itself, 
Football Manager 2 gives the player 
as much control over the playing of 
the match as the original, this being 
none at all. 

But gone are the block graphics 
and slow screen update. Instead., 
neatly animated weeny players rush 
about in a frenzy. They stick closely 
to their positions., well enough to be 


identifiable to a man. 

The pilch is split into three parts - 
defence, midfield and attack - and 
flicks, rather than scrolls. This aU 
faster action, and is much e? 
program. Players pass 
with varying degrees of, 
and move at roughly scale' 

Only abbreviated highly 
game are shown, each rru 
just long enough to hold the interest 
without boring. The results and 
league table are printed out at the 
end of the match. 

The team can be given extra pass¬ 



ing training. Players can be bought 
and sold, but bids are competitive, 
you always have to stump up 
ore than you think. Too many low 
ids, and the player is withdrawn 
rom the market. Bargain basement 
aradonas are out of the question. 
Very little of the actual running of 
he dub Is given to the manager, Far 
more emphasis is out on playing the 
matches, the eventual aim being the 
treble of league and two cups. This 
will take several weeks, so a save 
game option is welcome. 

The realism is quite astonishing; if 


a player is not completely fit he can 
be seen to be playing worse than 
usual. 

The game is surprisingly full of 
features for a single-load product 
and the addition of various skill 
levels ensures that FM2 will stay off 
the back shelf for months. 


Author: Addictive Games for 
Prism Leisure 

Price: £3.33 tape, £14,99 disc 





IMAGINE Football Man¬ 
ager without the bad bits, 

r This certainly isn't it r but 

It is reasonably close- The graphics 

and sound are strictly lunctioriaUu 

who buys this sort of game To 
visual appeal? 

( haven't yet found any ctieais 

possible with this game-there is no 

iTalways get the ' 88m lm , e 
J linekJ In the fourth M* 




THIS is going to be 
completely free of 
football cliches, Nobody 
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out. As one who never watches 
Match of the Day, these banal say¬ 
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If you liked the original buy this. If 
you like a challenge over a Fong 
per iod o r a re foorba 11 crazy, bu y th is. 
It s well written, well presented, and 
(ahem) well wicked, 





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7 


REVIEW 


z 


7 


Silent 

partners 

Pat Winstanley finds a three 
pronged package that will save the 
small businessman time and money 



S MALL businesses and clubs often need 
continual access to both a word processor 
and a database, with the facility to trans¬ 
fer information from the database to the 
word processor. Brunriing Software has 
designed Info-Script for just this purpose. 

BrunWord, BrunSpell and Info-Script have 
been integrated into one package so that the dif¬ 
ferent sections may be accessed from each other 
without the bother of having to load another pro¬ 
gram. If a 256k expansion is fitted r ail three pro¬ 
grams can be available in ram simul¬ 
taneously. 

The package was pet together for the benefit of 
users who initially am concerned only with the 
simpler aspects of mail merging. Once the basics 
have been mastered however, additional, more 


advanced, facilities allow the user to produce 
fairly impressive results from very complex data 
merging paths. 

The Info-Script database is arranged in the 
usual way with files, records and fields. A stand¬ 
ard 6128 can hold about 1,000 names and 
addresses, rising to about 3,000 if that 256k 
memory expansion is fitted. 

ft is also possible to hold around six pages of 
text in BrunWord at the same time. Each record 
can contain a maximum of 23 fields of up to 30 
characters. 

Extra flexibility for data storage is provided by 
the ability to link different records together. Two 
methods are used for this-records with identical 
data in the first two fields are classed as parents 
and sons, while apparently unconnected records 



linked with a special command are known as 
parents and daughters. 

The manual suggests that sons be used as 
archive records, like full cards in a manual system 
which are put in the back of the drawer when a 
new card is prepared. The full records can be 
viewed with a couple of key strokes from the 
current record but are not listed on the current 
record summaries. 

A suggested use for dau gtiters is to link names 
and addresses of suppliers with the records of 
the stock held. These, too, can be accessed easily 
from the main record. 

Although only one data file can be held in 
memory at a time, it may be split into sections by 
the use of record markers. Up to four sections of 
the file can be defined, either exclusively or over¬ 
lapping. Thus a club list could be split into full 
members, defaulting members, local members 
and out-of-town members, Each group may be 
viewed, printed or saved to disc, 

For most users the first step with Info-Script 
will be preparing address labels from the data¬ 
base records. Assuming the standard field layout 
has been retained, this is simply a matter of pick¬ 
ing the required records, marking them for use, 
loading the printer with labels and pressing a 
couple of keys. 

If you want to change the layout of the address 
label, perhaps to add a customer number at the 
top, the relevant template is loaded from the ram 
store, adjusted, then saved back again before 
use. 

In addition to address labels, templates for a 
simple fetter and invoice are included in the pack¬ 
age, Brunning may release a disc later with a 
wider variety of templates for those users who 
either can't or don't wish to prepare their own, 

Real power 

Having organised the database, the real power of 
the system is ready for use. Most small busi¬ 
nesses and clubs use a fairly constant layout for 
letters and invoices with only names, addresses 
and balances varying from one customer or 
member to another. 

Standard letters can be prepared and saved 
using BrunWord, then personal details for each 
recipient inserted during the printing stage. 


Page 54 


Amstrad User October 1988 





























r 


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fle-ase s^rP 


lv The follow l&f 


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TJ-o 11 Price 0 
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ibaz+v tzv WAT 


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total 1 AC VAT - ew-ww.M 


(For Chg-fch-uooi Conput-er.. - 


figure Its: Example invoke pattern 



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phone- ®j 2!j 0@ft6 


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DJIP 2000 
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Austria 

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€ 

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total Inc vat 


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2 

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£490.55 
973.. 56 


UAT 

X 

1 5 
IS 
15 
15 
IS 
15 
IS 


* £fiS 4 . 13 


Figure /ft?: 
The invoic 
after maii 
merge 


5iSued, L 

1FOf Chuirci '^od'c 0 iputer 3 i 


BrunWord knows whore and what to insert by the 
use of a different set of markers embedded in the 
text. 

Figure la shows a simple payment demand 
template with insert markers at appropriate 
points. This is what you would type into the word 
processor, Figure lb shows the resulting letter 
after a member's details have been inserted and 
the letter printed out. The marker &11 tells 
B run Word to print the details held in field 11 of 
the current record. 

Developing the idea further, Figure lla shows 
an invoice pattern and Figure lib the resulting 
invoice. Here the insert markers are a little more 
complex reflecting the need for calculations to 
take place on some of the data - such as working 
out VAT. The marker &2%12*4 tells the system to 
work out a percentage, the rate being held infield 
4 of the current record and the value to be worked 
on being held in field 12. 

The VAT for each item on the invoice is stored 
in a running total, while the marker itself is 
replaced during printing with a figure represen¬ 
ting the VAT rate, “his feature could also be used 
to calculate discounts for prompt settlement or 
perhaps show the balance on a savings scheme 
or credit account. 

The next level of complexity is conditional 
printing, where a small file is prepared which 
checks for the presence of a label in a particular 
field of the cu rre nt reco rd then dec ides wh ich text 
file should be loaded for merging. Thus new cus¬ 
tomers might have a letter advising of a lower 
credit limit than that sent to more established 
customers. 

Another application could be tagging records 
according to their purpose, for instance invoices 
and receipts. Info-Script will automatically load 
the correct template for the data, which could 
itself hold more conditional markers, and so on. 

Data from more than ore record car be printed 
or the same template by using a repeat marker 
which keeps going until all the data is used up or 
BrunWord runs out of memory. This would be 
handy for listing different items on an invoice or 
perhaps printing stock sheets for different groups 
of items. 

Conclusions 

The manual isn't the best example of its kind - it 
can be downright hard work at times-but all the 
information is there -if you dig hard enough. 
Getting started in the simpler concepts is very 
easy, with key by key examples to take you 
through the basic features, 

A sample data file is included far you to 
inspect, containing most of the features available 
both for simple and advanced use. But it isn't 
enough far a program to be supplied with 
demonstration files if those fries are not clearly 
explained, 

I found that the only way to make sense of 
Info-Script was to persevere until, after a great 
deal of trial and error, and lots of wasted paper, I 
finally figured out what was going on. 

Although well over 40 pages long, the man¬ 
ual's organisation means plenty of skipping back 
and forth to gather all the available information 
on a subject. Filing and Insert markers are 


referred to similarly in the manual, which can be 
very confusing at first, and, as so often happens, 
no index has been included. 

As the package is primarily aimed at the small 
business and clubs it is unlikely that many users 
will reach the limits of this system. For the 
average user who is more concerned with saving 
time and energy when writing a batch of similar 
letters, or anyone regularly preparing mail shots, 
Info-Script is a good choice. 


Info-Script costs £46. 

The package includes BrunWord, BrunSpeli and the 
Info-Script database, it is supplied on disc only and 
works on the 6128 or 464/664 with extra ram 
Info-Script is available from Brunning Software, 34 
Helston Hoad, Chelmsford. Essex, CM! 5JF (Tel 0245 
262864 24hrs) 



Amstrad User October 1988 


Page 55 



























































Answering 
the 

call to 
the bar 


Auntie John spends 
some time RSXercising 


H ELLO to everyone, and especially to 
Fiona's father who sneaks a look at this 
magazine every month, possibly in the 
hope that HI mention him. He's got no 
chance. The firm ware call we are going to look 
at this month is the one that sets up whet we in 
the machine code trade call an RSX. 

Remember those three letters - mentioning 
them at a party will gain you vital street ered 
points. But remember, if you do mention them 
you might have to explain what they stand for, 
which can be a problem. Unti now, that is, 
because I'm going to explain what they are and 
what to do with them. 

RSX stands for Resident System extension, 
Aha I It all becomes clear, doesn't it. No, seri¬ 


ously, RSXs ere no problem. In the simplest 
sense they are just machine code subroutines 
that you can call from Basic without having to 
remember nasty hex addresses. Every CPC has at 
least one RSX built in - try typing I BASIC, Oops. 
Did I mention that it resets the computer? 

Other RSXs that are supplied with disc-based 
machines are I TAPE, S DISC and everybody's 
favourite 3 CRM. (Bar Completely Pretentious 
Mnemonics). 

Using our own RSXs we can tack extra com¬ 
mands on to Basic. You have probably come 
across utility programs that add commands like 
1 GPEM and I FRAME, well now you can add 
some of your own. 

To set up the HSXs you must first give the 


computer a list of the commands you are going 
to use, This Iist must be out in s particulsr way 
else nasty things will happen. (Crash! Oh bother 
did I save that first? What? I didn't? Oh dear. I 
think I'm going to cry. Boo-hoo-hoo). 

The best way to explain how the command 
table is set up is to give an example, so let's look 
at what is needed to create an RSX called 
I GOBLE. 

Void filled 

And what's wrong with I GIBBLE? I GIBBLE is 
going to fill that desperate need that every CPC 
owner has to make his or her computer go 
"Bleep" and print an asterisk. Yes, yes, I know, 
how did you manage without it, But be patient 
my tittle artichokes and remember: Large 
machine code programs from tiny minds do 
grow. For the moment, though, take a look at 
Listing I. 

You can see that there are two tables. The first 
is the command table, which starts with the 
address of the name table, end continues with 
jump instructions to the machine code 
subroutines, In this case we only have the one 
subroutine, and so only one jump. 

The name table is where the RSX names them¬ 
selves are stored, The last character in each name 
must have its most significant bit (msbl set-that 
means that bit seven must be a 1 — and the eas¬ 
iest way to do this is to arid 128 to the byte (or 
&80 in hexadecimal!. All RSX names must be in 
capitals because Basic will automatically convert 
keyboard commands to upper case before 
processing them. The end of the name table is 
indicated by a single zero. 

Four bytes are needed by the operating system 
for its own evil purposes, and so we give it a 
"buffer" to play with. 

Recipe for success 

Now it was at about this time in the article that I 
was going to give you a listing of Fiona's recipe 
fo r Sweet and Sour Po rk, But s he wouldn't tel I me 
it, so I'll just have to make it up. Here goes... 


; Sets up simple an RSX caked iGISBLE. 


txt_output equ Sd b5a ;Routine to print character. 

Log_ext equ Sbcd' .jlte frmuare call that introduces 


org £4000 

; an RSK to the system. 

Id bc,coa*arid_tabLe 

;7he details required by the 

id ht, buffer 
call log.ext 

;fi rnuare call. 

re: 

;Retufn to Basu 

.buffer ds 4 

;.Four bytes needed ay system* 

.comna nd_ta ble 

du name taste 
jp gibhtecgde 

;The addresses O' the na-me table, 

.nane.csb l* 

dh k GlBfiLYE k +ES0 

;The fiSJf name. 

db 0 

„gibbleccde 

Id e,7 

;A special value to Indicate the 
;the erd of the name table. 

call tat-dutput 

Ld iM 

;prirt chrS< 7 ) 

ca.l ixt_ojtput 
ret 

end 

;print thr$U2J 


£,«ring i 1, Tfie code for t GIBBLE 


Page 56 


Amstnad User October 1988 














































Green stuff 





org the 

ki t c he rs 

.start 

Id bou. jrSugar 


Id bowi,vinegar 


call pre-pare_pock 


add bawl,pork 


Id oi/er v (bow L) 

< cook. 

peek (oven) 


cp conked 


jp r?,cgak 

■ eat 

id mouth,(pork) 


tifiHn. ■. 

.preoarfl.pork Id (grill),perk 


add saLt_and_pepper 


ret 


You could tr/ using rabbits instead of pork, If 
you want some rabbits, I know just where to get 
some... Ow! Stop hFning me, Fiona, I'll tell 
everyone you read Jeffrey Archer books,,, GK r I 
apologise for saying nasty things about your 
rabbits.. Please remind me to buy you same socks 
sometime. 

Of prunes and parameters 



Back to RSXs, and you may be interested to know 
that in their infinite wisdoms the designers of 
Arnold's interior decided to allow the user to pass 
parameters to and from RSXs and Basic, In Eng¬ 
lish, this means you can pass and receive num¬ 
bers and strings to and from the machine code 
subroutines. Thus you could write a subroutine 
called I GIBBLETWQ which requires a parameter 
after it to d elerm i n e t he nu m be r of a ste ri s ks to be 


printed out, To pass parameters you eat them 
with some prunes beforehand. Oops, sorry, No. 
To pass parameters with RSXs you put commas 
before them like this; I GIBBLETW0.42. 

The number of parameters passed is stored in 
the A register, and the parameters themselves 
are stored around an address given in the IX 
register. If you want to be exact about it, IX points 
to the address of the last entry, so you have to 
read them backwards. 

If yo u suppI y th e a dd ress of Basic va ri abl e$, by 
using the (fr. symbol before the variable name, 
you can get the machine code to return a value to 
Basic, 

Listing II is an example of this. It takes two 
integers, adds them and places the result in a 
predefined Basic integer variable. Integer vari¬ 
ables take up two bytes of ram, hence the four 
instructions needed to transfer their contents to 
machine registers - first the least significant byte, 


IB pS=10 

n iGiBeiETHREE,pp*, 10 fl, 2 M 
30 PRINT pi 
48 END 

listing HI: Using t GIBBLETHREE from Basic 

then the most significant byte. 

Listing III is a small Basic program that shows 
t GIEBLETHREE in operation, assuming it has 
been set up by assembling the code with the 
machine code assembler you bought. You did 
buy one, didn't you? 

The integer variable must have previously 
been assigned a value (as in line 10}., and If all 
goes to plan, rather amazingly the number 300 
will be printed. 



So anyway, there was my mate Green in the pub, 
and this very pretty girl came along and sat 
beside him. 

"Hello", says the girl. "Hello", says Green, 
sipping his pint 

J Tm thirsty'', says the girl, "Oh", says Green, 
"why don't you buy a drink then?" 

"I'd like to" says the girl, "but! haven't any 
money", 

"What a pity", says Greer, "why don't you get. 
your boyfriend to buy you one?" 

"I haven't got a boyfriend either", she simpers, 
"What? A pretty girl like you doesn't have a 
boyfriend?" 

"No, And I'm not that pretty really", 

"Hmm, No, I suppose you're not", says Green, 
downs his pint and leaves. 

There is a moral to this story. Pity I can't 
remember it. 

Passing strings 


String variables can be passed to the machine 
code subroutine in a similar way to integer vari¬ 
ables, However, because strings tend not to be 
fixed in length, a third byte is needed to tell us 
how many characters are involved. As we use 
only one byte for this purpose, strings are limited 
to a maximum length of 255 characters - 255 
being the largest number that one byte can hold, 
if you attempted to alter this length byte from 
within the subroutine, Basic would collapse in 
around you as it loses track of ail its variables - a 

► 


; Machine code to 

set up an RSX called IG1BBLETHREE 

j r nz,errortrap 

;parameters passed. 

; It adds integers sent to it, How. 

f 




Id a,(fx+0) 

;Re&d the 

tut output eau ibbSe ;Routine- to print character, 

Ld L,a 

r second 

Ic-suext equ Sbgd 1 jfirmware c&Ll that introduces an 

td 

;in t eg* r 


;RSX the- sy51en, 

Id h,a 

;paraneter. 

org £400® 


i 




Ld a,Ci*4 l) 

;Read the 

id be t command.tab 

,e ;The details required by the 

Id e>a 

;first 

Id hi,buffer 

firmware call. 

Ld a,Eia+3> 

; in t eg*r 

call iog.ext 


Ld d,a 

;paraneter, 

ret 

^Return to Basic. 





add hL,ce 

;Do the addition. 

suffer ds 4 

jFuur bytes needed by system. 





Id a,(ixH) 

;Get tiie address of 

, ccmiand.uble 


Id e,a 

;Basic pK variable 

dh name_taiLe 

;The addresses of the name table. 

Ld a,(ix+b) 

;into DE. 

jp giobleme 


Ld d^a 


.naiBe.ta&le 


Ld a,t 

;Poke the 

do GIBBLEtHRE 


id fcfe),a 

;resiilt into 

d& T>480 

;The RSX name. 

i nc die 

;the address 

db 0 

;h special vaLue tp indicate the 

Id a,h 

;hetd in D£. 


;the- end df the name table,, 

Id fde),3 


.gibbtemc 


ret 


f 

; that takes 

(only) two integers 

.error trap 


; adds them and returns there into a 

Ld a,42 

;Pr^r :t a * using ny very 

; Basic variable. 

Heaven knows why. 

call t k t^.ouiput 
ret 

^favourite firmware call. 

cp 3 

;Return to Basic if not three 

end 



Listing ii: The code for I GtBBLETHftEE 


Amstrad User October W88 


■ - U 

Page 57 

























PROGRAMMING 


L 


J 


nasty thing to happen to anyone, father like being 
very drunk, Iimagine, 

A slightty useful subroutine would he one that 
encoded any Ascii string passed to it. The easiest 
way to do this would be to XDH each part of the 
string with a special code-letter or, better still, a 
series of code-letters. The way XOR works means 
that to decode the string you encode it again. 

Listing IV sets up an REX that will encode the 
string with a code word, here converted into its 
Ascii equivalent-the five numbers following the 
XQRs. Once the string has been encoded it can be 
sent to disc ot tape fust like any other string - but 


if PRINTed to screen or printer will cause a 
terrible mess, 

To decode the string, pass it through the 
routine once more and all will be back to normal, 
Listing V shows you how to use 3 ENCODE from 
Basic assuming, once again, that you have 
previously assembled and CALLed the machine 
code I use CALL &40OQ to log the RSX on). 

Such fur. Vou now have a genuinely useful 
RSX that will protect your Ascii files from prying 
pryers. 

And so we come to the last programming 
example. The Basic function TIME returns the 


time in yonkettes of a second - useful for timing 
things like eggs or contractions - or rabbits 
(Owl). However, Basic doesn't allow you to reset 
this timer, so it is necessary to use another Basic 
variable to keep track, But wait! Listing VI will set 
up an RSX called I ZEROTIME, f'll leave you to 
study it in peace.., 

Well, by now you should be getting to grips 
with RSXs. Adding them to your computer is 
•nowhere near as painful as it may seem at first, 
and as you build up a library of the more useful 
routines, you will find your Basic programs 
become more and more adventurous, 


; S-ec b us siiipU 

an RSX called iENCObE that 

; uhen giver a string returns a coded version* 

Log.ejft ecu Sbcd 1 

; F i r mwar e tail that -introduces 


;an RSX to the system. 

erg 44000 


id bc,conrri nd_tabLe ;The details required by the 

id liL, buffer 

;fireiware call. 

call log_ext 


ret 

■Return to Basic. 

buffer ds 4 

;Four bytes needed by systen. 

.coanand-taDle 


dh name, table 

;The addresses of the name table. 

jp encode 


.rsa tie-table 


db mQD',T*S&( 

;The asx nane. 

dD 0 

;A special value to indicate the 


j the- end of the nane table. 

.encode 


tp 1 

;if not just one string present 

ret nz 

;ue return to Basic immediately, 

id 3,£ix+0} 


id l,a 

;gst the address -of 

id a^tix+1) 

;tiie string's 'descriptor’ 

id h,a 

;into HL. 

id a,fhL) 

;The Length of the string. 

cp 3 

;If the : .engih is zero 

ret z 

;return to Basic 

Id b,a 

;Store Length in B. 

ir>c hi 


Id a,m> 

;Lou byte of string address* 

1(3 e f a 


inc H 


Id a,(hi) 


Id d 

;High byte of string address. 

j 

; Now the subroutine to encode/decode a string. 

; BE contains the 

'address of the string. 

; B contains the 

length* 

r 

, loop 


Id £,(de) 


xor 70 


sor 105 


xor 111 


xor 110 

;Extre-neLy secret coce *ord 

xor 97 

; (use your our, obviously). 

Id (tie),a 


inc de 


d j nz loop 

;Repeat for entire length. 

ret 


end 



i 'Sl;ng IV: Routine to encode ,1 string 


An obvious thing for you to do would be to 
combine all the RSXs presented above into one 
program. All you need to do is to add the com¬ 
mands and names to the various tables, and then 
supply the code for each routine, Easy. 

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. 
Happy birthday dear .Auntie, Happy birthday to 
me. I r m old. 

See you next time. Bye. 


10 iNPurEntftf a string;a$ 

20 iENCODERS 

30 PRI«mccded string = r ;a$ 

40 PRIMrPrtss a key to decode.*. 
50 CALL 4BEM& 'wait for a keypress 
60 [ENCODERS 

70 PRINmtcoded string - ‘';aS 

80 m 


Listing V: Using t ENCODE from Basic 

; Program to set up an RSX called IZEROTIME 
; that resets the internal tiaer. 

set_tiner ecu SbdlG 
lag ext equ Sbcd* 

org 44000 

firmware call that sets the timer, 

;Firmware call that introduces 
;an RSX to the system. 

id bc-^Onnani taole 
id hl/buffer 
call log.ext 
ret 

;The details recuired by the 
firmware caLL. 

buffer ds 4 

;Four bytes needed by syster. 

, connand-table 
dw name.tabLe 
jp timercode 

;The addresses of the nane table. 

.nane.table 
db ; 

db 0 

, tinercode 

The RSX name. 

;A special value to indicate the 
;the end of the name table. 

r 

; A routine to reset the internarl timer 
; to zero, Dio I mention ay niddle name 
; is Terence? 

id hl,B 

Id ce,E 

call set-timer 
ret 


end 



Listing VI: Routine to reset the internet timer 



Page 58 


Amsttad User October 1988 

































PROGRAMMING 


L _ 7 


Comedy 
of errors 

Jeff Walker guides you through the four 
most common data related error messages 





xstmm MU 




-iVrt'jfrrtririiii 





T HE READ...DATA structure works very 
much like the normal way of assigning 
values to variables, We earn read string, 
integer or floating point data, but we must 
make sure that the variable we assign the data to 
is of the correct type. If not, those famous error 
messages can crop up. It is as well to learn about 
these error messages before experimenting with 
the READ...DATA structure. 

Oata exhausted 

Contrary to popular opinion, Data exhausted 
does not mean Arnold has been chasing the data 
around the computer's memory until it has run 
out of puff. It means you've told Arnold to READ a 
certain amount of DATA - say eight bytes - and 
he can only find, say, seven of them. In other 
words, there is some data missing. Run this: 


10 FOR byte-1 to 8:READ fa:NEXT 
20 D^a 95,33,54,91 ,Z‘,fi9,93 


The temptation for the novice here is to a ter 
the value of the FOR...NEXT index variable, byte, 
until the error message goes away. In many 
cases this will allow a program to continue for 
some time - but eventually weird things will 
happen until the computer crashes or stops with 
another error message. 

If you get Data exhausted in xxxx, where xxxx 
is a rie number, Erst check the FOR..,NEXT loop 
index variable to ensure you are telling Arnold to 
read the correct amount of DATA- Line xxxx will 
be the line w th the READ statement on; the FOR 
statement will be somewhere close to but before 
this READ statement, 

If that checks out, then it means you haven't 
typed enough data in. In a list of say 1,000 bytes 
of data,, it is very easy to miss one or two. IT also 
very easy to type a full stop instead of a comma 
between bytes of data. This, too, could cause a 
Data exhausted message: 


'0 FOR by l e*= 1 to 8 : R t A D u:NEXT 
20 DATA 93,33,54,91.21,69,93,42 


In the above example, the fourth and fifth bytes 
of data are being read as 91 21 — a single floating 


Abstract User October 1988 


Page 59 




















































































































point number - instead of 91 and 21 - two 
integers, So line 20 only contains seven bytes of 
data and you get a Data exhausted message. 
Stick a ":PR1NT fa" before the :NEXT in line 10, 
and the dodgy data will stick out a mile. 


Syntax error 



The strangest data-related error message is 
Synrajc error, And I don't mean the syntax error 
you get by spelling the keyword DATA incor¬ 
rectly- The syntax error I mean is the one caused 
by the READ statement disliking a piece of data it 
has been asked to read Try this one: 


10 

FUR byte-1 10 5 

20 

mt> 

naiteS 

50 

READ 

age 

40 

NiKT 


50 

DATA 

Toflj,32,D- tk.24 y Harfy ,12 


Here we are reading employee's Christian 
names followed by their ages. Got we have fallen 
into the old trap - between Dick and 24 - of 
putting a full stop where a comma should be. So 
why do we get a Syntax e/nor message? 

Well let's follow the loop around- On the first 
pass we read the string data "Tom" into the 
string variable nameS followed by the numerical 
data "32" into the numeric variable age, No prob¬ 
lems there. But on the second pass we start by 
reading the string data "Dick.24" into the string 
variable nameS. Again, there is nothing wrong 
with this - a string can contain any character or 
group of characters we like. 

However, the erroneous full stop has thrown 
our structure out of sync because it and the value 
24 have been appended to the "Dick" data. Thus 
the next thing we try to do is read the string data 
"Harry" into the numeric variable age. This 
causes the Syntax error message, 

This is weird. Why is this weird? Well, this is 
weird because if you try to assign data to the 
wrong type of variable, the message you should 
get is Type mismatch. Try it. Type ags^ "Harry" 
into your CPC and press Enter, See? This is what 


wa call a bug and what Amstrad calls a feature. 

Anyway, presuming the keyword DATA has 
been typed correctly, Syntax error in a DATA line 
always means we are attempting to read string 
data into a numeric variable. The error could be 
in the DATA line - a wayward fuM stop., or 
i ncorrectf missing data - or it could be in the 
READ statement where the dollar sign is missing 
from the string variable name. Got it? Good. Pass 
the aspirin. 

Type mismatch 

The infamous Type mismatch is by far the most 
common data related error message by a long, 
long way. The good news is that Type mismatch 
is closely related to one particular type of data - 
hexadecimal numbers. 

Hex numbers are mostly used in DATA state¬ 
ments for machine code. These numbers consist 
of two characters, each of which can be a number 
in the range zero to nine, ora letter in the range A 
to F lupper or lower case - it amounts to the 
same number I. Herein lies the problem, Tap the 
following in: 


10 REAP :S <- -ead it 

20 ssVHL(Tfbi) ' -convert if 

30 PSINT b <--.-— print it 


50 DAT A c 9 <-- 


This small program READs a hex dig it from the 
DATA line into b$, a string variable. In line £0 the 
string variable is passed through the VAL func¬ 
tion - a function that converts string data into 
numeric data. However, since the string data we 
want to convert is a hexadecimal number, the 
rule is we must prefix it with an ampersand 
character. That's what the {"St"+b$) bit is doing. 
After the string "&c£T has been converted to a 
number it is assigned to the variable b. Line 30 
displays the decimal value of the number, which 
in this case is 201, 

With hex data like this, the Type mismatch 
error always happens in the VAL function. It is 
caused by mistyping the hex numbers in the 
DATA statements, The most common mistake is 
to type a capital letter 0 Instead of the number 
zero. Change the byte in line 30 to read Oa - 
that's a big letter 0 and a little letter a - in place of 
c9. Run the program again. See? Now replace the 
bad letter O with the correct number zero and run 
it again. Good, isn't it. 

Other favourite mistakes are typing a lower 
case L instead of the number 1 r and the slash 
through the number zero sometimes causes it to 
look like the number 8, In fact, when the hex 
digits are in upper case, the number 8 and the 
letter B look incredibly similar, as well. Now you 
know why machine code hex listings are 
checksummed, 

So how do we spot our typo in a long list of 
data? The Type mismatch message always refers 
to the I in e with VAL on, so it is no hel p at a 11. What 
we must do is use the program variables to do 
some detective work. The "Basic poker" part of 
the listing will look something like Figure L The 
variable names may differ and It may contain 
more or less calculations, but more often than ■ 


not you'll find two loops,, one inside the other. 

In Figure I we have FOR iin= 1000 TO 1500STEP 


m 

HENORY MFFFia=M080 



110 

m u 11=1000 to ism 

STEP 

T 0 

120 

csun=&:FOR byte=1 TO 

& 


130 

READ aS:c=VHU u%) 



U0 

cs'JFi=csu!T- + b:POKE a r s 

a=aH 

: NEXT 

150 

READ sur;:' : sumocsun THEN 

110 ELS 


l NEXT 



160 

CALL m00:fi0TO 2H 



170 




m 

PRINT’Csun error in Line"; Lin: STOP 


Figure t: Example Basic poker 


W in line 110, and FOR byte=1 TO 8 in line 120. 
When your program stops with Type mismatch in 
xxxx, these two loop index variables - tin and 
byte - will still be holding values. The variable iin 
will be holding the line number the program has 
got up to, and the variable byte will tell us which 
piece of data in that line the program last read. 
So, if you typed PRINTlm t byte and the two num¬ 
bers 1230 and 6 were displayed, line 1230 byte 6 
would be a good place to start looking for typing 
errors. 


Improper argument 



Of the error messages discussed so far, Improper 
argument is, on the whole, the easiest to correct. 
The argument is the value or values following a 
command. In LOCATE x r y the arguments are x 
and y. What Arnold is telling you is that The value 
of at least one of these arguments Is such that it is 
impossible for him to do what you ask. 

For example, if either x or y held the value zero, 
it would be an improper argument because there 
is no text position zero on the screen - the lowest 
position is 1. 

Anyway, as usual a line number is reported 
along with improper argument, and it is here that 
we must start our investigation, Study the line in 
question and PRINT all variables on that !ine to 
see if they are falling out of the range accepted by 
the preceding keyword. The LOCATE example 
above is a fairly common one, so is POKEing 
floating point values or values greater than 255 or 
less than zero. 

Once we have discovered what the improper 
argument is, we can start looking for It in the 
DATA using the same techniques as for Type 
mismatch - you know, PRINT lin f byte or 
whatever the loop index variables are. 

At the very least there will be one loop index 
variable, byte say, which may loop from 1 to 
1,000 or more; m a case such as this you would 
PRINT byte and start counting from the begin¬ 
ning of the data in question. If the data happens 
to be in regular groups of 10 or 16, so much the 
better, 

So there you have it, the four most common 
data related error messages. Now you know how 
to find the bugs, experimenting with the 
READ...DATA structure should pose no prob- 



PageQQ 


Amstrad User October 1988 






























































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DMP re-Inklng klf..£ 10 CO 

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(CetauT/Mana)...C1A.SO 

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fCdfesur/MonO).5? 50 

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MICRO MATHS (CPC. PCW, PC. Spec;. Complete Kurae taking beginners to GCSE, in 24 
programs on 53 topics on 2 tapei'disc ■+ 2 books. £24. 

MICRO ENGLISH (CPC. PCW. BB-C). Compose course Lading beginners (from age 3 years) to 
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PRIMARY MATHS COURSE (CPC. PC, BBC). Complete course taking ages 3 yea-s to secondary 
school entrance usog moving colour pictures, around £4 programs on 2 tspesAdise + Z bocks.QA. 
Extra essons to age 14 years. Fur her £5 only (£23 m total). 

MEGA MATHS (CPC, PCW. BBC). 24 program A-Levei course, covers 105 topics on 2 topes-’d sc 
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MICRO ENGLISH VIDEO. VHS video to miroduce each topic, with manual. CZS.S9. 

MICRO MATHS VIDEO. (As above) 

Send orders with P-0., 1 Cheque or catalogue- requests to: LCL (Dept. ACU), Thames House. 
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Tel: 0491 579345 (24 hrs) 





COMPUTER 

REPAIRS 


We repair Amstrad models 464 f 664, 6128, 
8256, 8512, PCI 512 and Amstrad Monitors. 
All repairs carry a 3 month warranty. 


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Designed by 
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PHONE US NOW FOR DETAILS 



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ARC (ACU 10), 51 Coniston Crescent, HUMBERSTON, 
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Page $2 


Amstrad User October 1988 






















































































































OUR PRICE 

£ 14.95 


PLUS for an extra £1.95 well send you a 
disc packed full of polyphonic tunes by 
Vivaldi, Strauss, Grieg, Handel, Chopin, 
Bach and Khatchaturian. (The disc is 
also available separately for £4,95.) 


HH 


Amstrad User October 1988 


Page 63 

























ONLY 



For this . . . 



This is the latest smash from Addictive. It Is a 
unique combination of Pinball, Breakout and 
Tennis which can be played by one or two 
players. 

The object of this fast^action game is to clear 
ali your bricks from the top of the screen, while 
at the same time trying to hit your opponent 
with a missile, which you control by sucking it 
towards your gun when it is near you. But 
you have to be careful, because if you miss 
you'll lose a life. 

Hotshot is a game which wifi keep you 
playing for weeks and is sure to become one of 
the top games of the year. And for only 99p t it 
can be yours when you take out a subscriptionI 



Volume 1 
13 games 



MMj 




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Roland Takes a Running Jump - 

A colourful fast-action ladders and 
levels game which developed from 
the highly praised series of articles 
on writing your own arcade games. 
Racer - Get behind the wheel of 


this Grand Prix racing car and take 
it for a spin round the tortuous test 
track. 

Space Mania - This machine code 
mega-program has loads of screens 
to negotiate in a ladders and 


platforms extravaganza! 

Splatch - Think you've seen this 
one before? Balderdash,, we reply. 
Help the rabbit get to the carrots, 
and don't forget to drop an acorn 
on the squirrels I 


... when you take out a subscription to 


Page 64 


Amstrad User October 1988 























SAVE 
up to 




RRP 

£9.95 tape 
£12.99 disc 





Volume 2 
20 games 


. . . and many, many more top- 
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these compilations should not be 
missedf 


These anthologies 
may be bought 
separately using 
the order form. 





Note: Existing subscribers may renew their 
subscriptions early to fake advantage of these 
superb offers. 


Offers subject to 
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ORDER FORM 


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£✓) £p 


£25 Europe Ind Eire 
£40 Overseas 

Commence w*h - 


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Get any one inese 
let only 


£15 UK 

£25 Europe ind Eire 
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99 


when you subscribe 
flick one box only] 



8000 

8001 

8002 

tnue 


Staff 

9S7? 

88T3 


Hotshot Tape 87T9 

Hotshot Disc 8117 

ACU Antholog y Vd 1+2 Tfipe 8730 
ACU Amhotagy Vd 1+2 Disc 9737 


Advanced Music System 

{see pope S3) 

Advanced M lwIc System dlec £ 14.9S 

Advanced Music System + Music disc £16.90 
Music disc £4,95 


8(32 

613$ 

6160 


Add £2 Europe and D re/£5 Overseas 


Advanced Art Studio 


CPC 464.664, 6125 Dec 
Add £2 Europe and ElrW£5 Overseas 


£14,95 


6UT 


ACU Anthology (see opposite) 


Volume 1 T^w 
Volumes Tape 
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£7.95 9767 

£7,95 6753 

£9,95 67fi? 

£9.95 9764 


Utilities Unlimited 

Tape £7.95 87fi5 

Disc £9.95 8166 

Pack ct 8 Intcrmadop sheets £4,95 677? 


Back numbers of ACU «i 

UK £1.S0. £2.00 ElkefM ft Eke. £3.50 Ov«Ma 


January 

9038 


Aprs 

804T 


July sou 


February 

8039 


May 

8042 


August 604$ 


March 

8040 


June 

9043 


September 9046 



Dust covers 


CPC 4W664 keyboard: £ 3,95 

CPC 6129 keyboard £3,95 

CPC range green screen £5.95 

CPC range wtaur monitor £5.95 

DMP2COW3O00 Printer £3.95 

PCW 6256 keyboard, monitor and printer net £11 ,95 
PC 1 51 2 Keyboard + colour monitor set £9,90 

PC 1512 Keyboard + mono moniw set £9.90 


8300 

6701 

670? 

6703 
8T05 

6704 


6134 

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User October 1988 


Page 65 









































































































































































































iW-' 


tern "ui 


mited G Central Street - Manchester - M2 5NS - Tel 





























































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